Dear readers and followers, a new issue of the Croatian and Comparative Public Administration (1/2022) has just been published.
. This is the first issue under the responsibility of a new editor-in-chief Vedran Đulabić and it contains six articles and one book review – all written in English. Scientific papers are grouped into three sections that reflect main topics of the issue and indicate the interdisciplinarity of the journal.
In the first section, dedicated to administrative law, P. Kovač analyses and compares the traditional and modern (European oriented) principles of the administrative procedures in four CEE countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Czech Republic). K. Štemberger concludes the first section with the paper that analyses legal dilemmas and problems in the field of Slovenian concession law, drawing possible solutions de lege ferenda from comparative examples in Croatian, Italian and Czech law.
Papers of the second section deal with topics of Europeanization and European integration. F. Akyildiz writes about the never-ending process of Turkish accession to the European Union and the adjustments of the politico-administrative system that were undertaken in that regard, focusing specifically on several important principles of the European administrative space: openness, accountability and transparency. G. Lalić Novak and T. Giljević compare migration and asylum institutions in Poland, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Institutional developments and changes are interpreted as being path dependent, influenced significantly by both historical legacies and the process of Europeanization.
Third section of the journal issue is dedicated to local government services. M. Dmytryshyn presents an innovative model of real estate management in local government which implies the inclusion and the participation of the public in the assessment of local government property value. Z. Babić and Z. Šućur analyse policies, measures and expenditures of Croatian counties in the area of social protection and social care. They identify a clear relation between existing economic inequalities and social inequalities, concluding that the so-called ‘Matthew effect’ has been also present in Croatia, as social expenditures have been the lowest in economically most deprived counties.