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Strengthening policy capacity for regional policy: Croatian experiences from national and subnational government

Regional policy is becoming more and more important as Croatia approaches potentials of the full EU membership in future. With its financial implications regional policy represent very promising policy field for social and economic development at local level, which could be used as addition of scarce national financial resources devoted to finance projects of local and regional development. On the other side, administrative aspects of regional policy demand for strengthening policy capacity in local and regional level on order to raise overall capacity of local and regional units to fully utilize all benefits of regional policy. Strategic programming, working in partnership with civil sector and economic partners, project development and management, policy monitoring and evaluation are few basic elements which have to be strengthened in local and regional level in Croatia. However, fragmentation of local self government, inadequate fiscal and personal capacity represents potential bottlenecks which might block the full use of resources that would be available to local and regional level in the framework of regional policy. The paper will also present empirical data on the effect of new institutional and legal framework for regional policy (Strategy and Law on regional development with its bylaws), which is adopted at the end of 2009 and during 2010, on the new working methods in public administration based on the implementation of the partnership principle as one of the core principles of EU regional policy.

Policy capacity; regional policy; Croatia

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