Ivan Koprić

Local Government and Local Public Services in Croatia

In Croatia, the 1990s were the years of centralisation. The role of local government in the provision of public services was significantly weakened. Privatisation was connected with general transformation of the former ‘social’ ownership economy into market economy. In spite of being influenced by the new public management doctrine, the European Union’s liberalisation and privatisation policy, and efforts of the private sector, the Croatian public sector is still strong and able to provide a wide array of services to its citizens. Despite privatisation in many sectors (primary healthcare, telecommunications, waste management), vivid remnants of public esprit de corps exist. Thus, the role of the private sector in the provision of local services is developing gradually. There are no signs of re-municipalisation. The division of services between the state and the local government is still a more important issue than the potential failure of the private sector in the provision of quality local public services.

Local Government Development in Croatia. Problems and Value Mix

In most European countries local self-government is considered to be a counter-balance to the central government and a form of division of power based on territorial principle. It is also considered to be a suitable milieu for providing a wide scope of public services necessary to the citizens. In many Western European countries local self-government was established as a part of democratic political tradition that can, in some cases, be traced back to a relatively distant feudal past. Expected improvement of democratic values joined with an expected increase of total institutional capacity for solving public problems has recently led to an intensified process of decentralisation in both Western European and transitional countries.

Decentralization as a Precarious Component of Contemporary European Governance

The paper presents several main issues and theses about the interconnectedness of decentralization and European governance in a time of overall complexity and wicked governance problems

Evaluation of the Decentralisation Programme in Croatia: Expectations, Problems and Results

The chapter aims to evaluate decentralisation reform in Croatia in 2001–2015. The main research question considers the impacts, the effects, and the outcomes of decentralisation programmed in four policy areas: education, health, social care, and firefighting. Although some analyses of the particular sectors and aspects of decentralisation have been performed, neither a comprehensive evaluation of the whole decentralisation package nor the comparison between the four policy areas has been conducted so far. The evaluation is based on the program theory model. The research focuses on several types of information sources: legal, policy and other official documents, reports, statistics, and semi-structured interviews with the main actors of decentralisation. These have been used as a basis to determine the reform goals, expectations, main problems, and the most important effects of decentralisation policy.

Agencies in Three South Eastern European Countries: Politics, Expertise and Law

Abstract Agencies are an organisational form with regulatory, expert or executive tasks that may ensure better usage of expertise compared to traditional administrative organisations. However, there are certain unintentional effects of the agency model, which are more obvious in transitional countries. Coordination and policy coherence gaps may raise the question of political accountability, provoke robust political interventions, and undermine the level of autonomy and expertise, especially where a firm legal framework does not limit the influence of politics. Another problem is the effective legal control over agencies. Traditional, bureaucratic legal procedures of internal control and courts’ supervision in certain transition countries, like those researched in the paper (Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro), are not fully suitable and effective for agencies, opening significant room for politicisation hidden behind expertise. The recent proliferation of agencies in those countries causes many new problems of public administration and enhances old ones. Interview-based research conducted in three countries in January 2012 has the purpose to establish the main problems and issues in the functioning of agencies, especially with regard to the legal aspect of agency and politics / policy relations. Basic findings confirm the hypothesis that the agency model in those countries has not been stabilised yet. Professionalism, autonomy and expertise of the agencies are in a precarious position. The legal framework for agencies should be fine-tuned and strengthened, to ensure proper steering within the agency model.

Local Public Services and Austerity Measures in Croatia: Adaptations of the Resilient Social Model through the Central-Local Power and Blame Games

An economic crisis hit Croatia in the period 2008–2014, simultaneously with the EU pre-accession process, provoking various austerity measures in the public sector. The influence of the economic crisis on local service delivery in the healthcare, water, and waste sectors is analysed within the neo-institutional theoretical approach. The main Government’s austerity strategy in the three analysed sectors has aimed at efficiency through financial consolidation and institutional rearrangements. A muddling-through adaptation to environmental pressures has enabled the Croatian local governments to remain untouched by structural, territorial, or similar measures. They adapted to the new situation using the welfare needs as a barrier against any serious reform, despite an inclination towards centralization caused by the lack of capacities in the vast majority of them. It is concluded that the concept of resilient local authority opens appropriate research questions in times of crisis and wicked problems that befall local governments.

Lessons Learned from Successful and Unsuccessful Local Public and Social Service Delivery Reforms

The usual purpose of evaluative studies is to serve in future governance, policy, and administrative activities. Explorative, well empirically grounded evaluations strongly embedded in social science better contribute to accumulation of policy-usable knowledge and improve the chances of evaluation-generated knowledge utilization. Consequently, this chapter offers a list of lessons derived from the other chapters comprised in this volume. Lessons have been learned about local service delivery regimes, including the conditions and organization of their provision and delivery, comprehensive local service reforms and their effects, and the evaluation of local service delivery and knowledge utilization. Practitioners may inspire themselves by the lessons collected; but a host of lessons may also be utilized by researchers working on the interface of evaluation and local service provision.

Institutional Environments and Mayors’ Role Perceptions

The role of mayors and their role perception may depend on the changing role of local governments, different national institutional settings, and recruitment patterns. This chapter presents an analysis of the most significant changes among European mayors in terms of their role perceptions over the past decade. In this respect, the chapter examines mayors’ role perceptions in relation to the changing role of local governments. Furthermore, the question is addressed whether role perceptions of mayors are affected by different forms of their election and institutionally defined horizontal power relations at the municipal level throughout Europe, including recruitment patterns of mayors.

Evaluating Reforms of Local Public and Social Services in Europe

The chapter identifies an evaluation gap in the European literature on local public sector reforms and a lack of cross-sectoral comparisons of local services successfulness. It presents a common theoretical and methodological framework of studies included in this volume. There is still the north-west–south-east divide in the performance of the studies evaluating the successfulness of local service regimes and their reforms. The chapter introduces the concept and structure of this volume whose chapters deal with the evaluation of several local services regimes, the evaluation of comprehensive local service reforms in Europe, and the general issues of evaluating local services. The whole repertoire of evaluation approaches applicable to the local service delivery is briefly introduced. The explanatory function of evaluation is addressed as well as the problem of and possibilities for utilisation of evaluation-generated knowledge.

One Candle, Two Candles… Is There the Third One ? Croatian Public Administration Reform before and after the EU Accession

Croatia has a relatively big but ineffi cient public administration. About 293,000 employees or about 17 % of the work force is employed by the state, according to the World Bank. Th e share of public wages in GDP in 2014 was 11.8 % (WB 2016, 43 – 44). However, more detailed data show there are about 317,000 employees or more than 18 % of the work force employed by the state (Koprić 2017a).2 Th e percentile rank of Croatian government eff ectiveness at the Worldwide Governance Indicators in 2015 was 72, in comparison to 88 for the OECD countries (WGI 2015).