ANALYSIS OF THE ALIGNMENT OF PUBLIC POLICIES DEVELOPMENT IN THE WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION STANDARDS

Abstract

The process of creation, development, adoption and enforcement of public policy presents an exceptionally challenging issue for several reasons. First of all, public policies are used to identify and resolve certain social problems and social issues, them being their primary aim. Furthermore, public policy articulates the aims of governing political subject, through which they strive to realize their programs. And finally, public policy satisfies certain needs of citizens and business community. It is therefore very difficult to achieve the full correlation of these three goals while simultaneously fulfill all genuine needs of society and ideological and political goals of governing elites. Something like this presents a challenge in the complex societies of post-conflict and countries of post-socialist transition, as Western Balkans countries are considered to be. Namely, for many decades such environments had a narrowly set and monolithic approach to the projection of public policy, though the concept of their strategic planning was radically revised a decade ago and entered into a completely different qualitative and quantitative phase.

The subject of this paper is the Analysis of the alignment of public policies development in the Western Balkan countires with the European Union standards. The paper will envelop a brief review of public policy adoption process in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania. The pillar in the presentation of the said countries constitutesthe existing criteria and tools which were projected and evaluated by SIGMA-OECD organization, with the aim to converge public administrations of Western Balkans countries with European administrative region. The paper uses the methods of legal exegesis, content analysis, comparative methods, principles and indicators of SIGMA-OECD, and provides an empirical review of the assessment of the situation conducted on the given thematic by the said organization.