The Constitution was promulgated at the session of the Council of Nationalities of the Federal Assembly. The solutions adopted under the 1967, 1968 and 1971 amendments were entered into the new Constitution. The top legal act of the state said for the first time that the SFRY had the national anthem, but its name was not mentioned.

The Constitution introduced the consensus among republics and provinces in decision-making, including the decision to amend the Constitution. The right to self-determination and secession was legalised, but it remained unclear whether this right belonged to the peoples or to republics. Social ownership was defined as the main feature of the economic system. The system of delegates was introduced as the basis for the assemblies of all social, political and interest communities and bodies of social self-management.

Since the amendments had thoroughly reformed the federation, the 1974 Constitution introduced no major changes in the determination of character and content of functions and relations in the federal state. Changes mostly occurred in the organisation of the federation. Instead of the previous five houses, the SFRY Assembly was now made up of the Federal Council and the Council of Republics and Provinces. Josip Broz Tito became the president "without any limitation on his term of office." SIV members were elected by both houses of the SFRY Assembly, which had to pay attention to the equal representation of republics and appropriate representation of autonomous provinces.

The Constitution defined more exhaustively and clearly the self-management interest communities as a relatively new form of self-management linking. The obligation was established of constituting municipal local offices as the basic form of self-management organisation of working people and citizens at the local level. The Constitution stressed and elaborated the social protection of self-management rights and social property, and bodies in charge of realising this protection were determined. Some important novelties were introduced in this field. The social defender of self-management was introduced as an autonomous body initiating the procedure for the protection of self-management rights of the working people and social property.

List of Constituent Acts of Yugoslavia