engleski

Re-organization of local administrative- territorial units in Croatia

For 30 years (1963–1992), the municipality was the fundamental territorial unit in Croatia (102 municipalities in 1991). Municipal centres, thanks to the decision-making system at the time, received a privileged position and led the economic development dynamics. In this system, municipal centres became the centres of polarised development at the local level. From the early 1990s, two-tier territorial organisation has been established: counties (21) at the regional level, and administrative towns/municipalities (556) at the local level. The vast majority of current small municipalities were not able to accept decentralized functions according to legislative changes in 2001 and such local government system is often publically critisized due its ineffectiveness. The objective of this study is to propose the new territorial organisation. The main premise is that the functionally most significant settlements (cities and larger labour centres) are most appropriate as centres of administrative-territorial units. According to this, a new model based on exact criteria (settlement size and economic strength) is proposed. It resulted in a significant reduction in the number of local centres from the current 556 to 123. Establishing larger local units will also increase their fiscal power and make them able for acceptance of decentralized functions and open ways for further decentralization process. Our model is oriented towards decentralization in Croatia as a part of overall formal or non-formal augmentation of local units in Europe for ensuring better self-governing and more accessible public and social services.

Croatia, cities, territorial organisation, local governance, municipalities

nije evidentirano