Changes which occurred in the field of economic, political and social organisation of Yugoslavia between 1946 and 1953 were initially regulated by laws and then by the Constitutional law of the FPRY. The Constitutional Law was not the complete Constitution of Yugoslavia. It abolished and amended much of the 1946 Constitution, but did not abolish it completely. In the first part the Constitutional Law declared the new rights of producers and working people, formulated the contents and form of power of the working people, regulated the issue of relations between the federation and republics. The second part refers to the organisation of authority in the federation and truly represents a federal law. The third part includes provisions about the bodies of power of republics and bodies of power of the autonomous province and autonomous region.

Yugoslavia was defined as a socialist democratic federal state of sovereign and equal peoples. While the 1946 Constitution stressed that power belonged to the people, the Constitutional Law said that "all power in the FPRY belongs to the working people." One of the most important novelties was the provision under which the following was to be the basis of the social and political organisation of Yugoslavia: "social ownership of the means of production, self-management of industrial producers, self-management of the working people in municipalities, cities and circuits."

The highest body of power in Yugoslavia was the Federal People's Assembly which had two houses – the Federal Council and the Council of Producers. Although the Constitutional Law did not define the Council of Nationalities as a separate chamber, it envisaged it as a separate chamber in which deputies from the republics and autonomous units at the Federal Council had the special right to veto the adoption of laws and other decisions of the Federal Council which they believed undermined the Constitutionally defined relations between the federation and people's republics.

Instead of the Presidium as the collective head of state, the office of the republic president was established and he was simultaneously the head of state and president of the Federal Executive Council. Ministries and committees were replaced by state secretariats and administrations. Members of the Federal Executive Council (SIV) were elected from amongst the members of the Federal Council. Every republic was represented in the Government and presidents of the executive councils of the republics were members of SIV according to their position. SIV had two or more vice presidents.

List of Constituent Acts of Yugoslavia