EU COHESION POLICY IN NATIONAL CONTEXT: TOWARDS MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE OR NOT?

Goal of the paper is to address the concept of multilevel governance on the basis of Croatian experience with management of the EU cohesion/regional policy. Primarily focus is on the administrative aspects of EU cohesion policy management in national administrative context. The paper will try to answer does the institutional arrangements set up for cohesion/regional policy management stimulate multilevel governance relations among the various governance actors. Multilevel governance emerged as a doctrinal concept which is used to explain the changes of administrative governance in EU member states caused by cohesion policy requirements. Its evolution is direct consequence of some of the basic principles of EU cohesion policy, such as the partnership principle. The partnership requirement stimulated inclusion of local and regional government actors, as well as economic ad social partners into the policy process, creating highly coordination intensive administrative environment. However, comparative experiences show that the implementation of partnership principle is heavily dependent on the existing national administrative tradition and the level of (de)centralization. Influence of the European Commission has also a significant impact on institutional arrangements for management of cohesion/regional policy, which was especially recognized in the transition member states during their pre-accession stage. Situation is quite similar in the present candidate countries. The paper will analyze the Croatian administrative and policy context, which is characterized by fragmentation instead of strategic/holistic approach to institutional development and high level of centralization of regional/cohesion policy management structures. It will present the empirical data of field research conducted during 2010 regarding the future implementation of the partnership principle in the Croatian context. In the final section some conclusions are made based on the empirical data presented in the paper.