Sanja Barić

Social Rights in the Republic of Croatia: Scattered to the Four Winds of Regulation

The language of the Croatian legal system in the first two and half decades of its independence is the one of reform. Significant reforms affected social rights all through this period and beyond. The authors analyse a tool that the state uses in order to reform—the normative process—starting with policy drafting and ending with enforcement of the law. The main purpose of this contribution was to identify four ways in which the quality of the normative activity within a state may threaten social rights. Those four dangers are termind “winds”: (mis)conception, multiplication, acceleration and estrangement. The choice of words is not for poetic purposes. By creating a connection between something that is man-made, apparently under our full control, with a natural phenomenon that comes and goes as it pleases, the authors sought to dispel a very prominent idea in Croatian political circles: that problems in regulation may be cured by better regulation. It is suggested instead that regulating is strongly affected by traditions, ways of thinking and responding that go beyond the halls of the Parliament or the mayor’s office. Those have to be identified and the “sails” of the law adjusted to use them and protect our vital interests from their overreach. This idea may not be novel abroad, but it is practically still to be discovered in Croatia. Until then, it can only be continuously pointed out that only some winds can be deflected by changes in the law itself, with (mis)conception being a good candidate and multiplication a close second. On the other hand, resolution of problems such as acceleration and estrangement pose a question whether a society truly wants to construct a functioning democracy and, secondly, whether it wishes to take social rights as a serious segment of such a democracy.