In the 1990s, the official policies towards NGOs were marked with suspicion and mistrust. NGOs, especially the ones dealing with troublesome social and political issues or “watchdog” organizations, were considered agents of foreign political interests and, quite often, enemies of the state. After 1998, and especially after the 2000 change of the Government, this situation gradually changed, both at the level of perception and at the level of public policies towards organized civil society. The programme of cooperation released in 2001 came out of an intense interaction between the civil society actors (primarily individual activists, some of them with organizational affiliations and others acting independently) and the Government that started increasingly to recognize potential of engaging in dialogue with organized citizens.
The government’s institutional capacities for engaging CSOs are often not matched with the comparable capacities of the CSOs to engage with the Government. That is, CSOs often are not able to respond to invitations to participate in the consultative processes initiated by Government. Civil society representatives often claim that the openness for cooperation is primarily on the government’s own terms. That is, if there is a will on the side of the public sector, the civil actors are able to provide services and even improve the performance of the public actors (in welfare, health, prisons, and a variety of other fields). However, very seldom they are able to exercise a considerable impact on the public agenda setting. The recent research on participation of citizens’ association in the legislative process suggested that the public sector often lacks understanding of benefits resulting from broader consultative processes. The associations, on the other hand, need to increase their knowledge on the legislative process and develop capacities for providing appropriate inputs.
CSO participation to development of national strategic documents on a regular basis. Civil society has played a significant role in the following strategic processes: National Strategy for the Creation of an Enabling Environment for Civil Society Development; National Programme of Action for Youth; establishment of the current institutional framework for the advancement of gender equality.
Civil society representatives are included as experts and advisors in various consultative bodies, on the level of central government, government offices, agencies and ministries, and also on the level of parliamentary committees. The level of their influence varies considerably from one body to another, depending to a large extent on the overall resources available for their specific functions.
Recent research on the contribution of the CSOs to democratization processes shows that majority of associations with the mission of promoting human rights, environmental protection and democracy (89% in the sample of 90) have organized a significant number of public campaigns, were involved in legislation initiatives related to different laws and had direct access to policy-makers through their representatives in the Croatian Parliament committees and various other consultative bodies to the Government.
Within the planning of the PHARE 2006 (Enabling the Civil Society Sector for Active Contribution in the Pre-accession process grant scheme), the civil society sector, through the Council for Civil Society Development, was actively involved in the defining of priority areas for financing and in the sectoral analyses. In addition, the Guidelines for Applicants were offered for a wide sector consultation through the website of the Government Office for Cooperation with CSOs. However, having in mind all efforts made to include the broader spectrum of CSOs in the process of future IPA planning the priorities that will be financed in the scope of the IPA grant scheme the response of CSOs regarding was not very big.
The National Foundation for Civil Society Development’s (NFCSD) network of 5 regional organizations and its European Centre for Cross-Sectoral Partnership (IMPACT) offers an entire infrastructure that has linked the existing capacities and has directed them towards harmonizing regional development of civil society, including its inclusion in policy- and decision-making with the appropriate financial support, i.e. The Programme for Regional Development and Strengthening of Civil Society Organizations on the Local and Regional Level.
On the local level, the institutional mechanisms for engaging civil society need further improvement. While almost half (39.5%) of the local government units (towns and municipalities) have some kind of advisory boards including civil society representatives, there are very few with formalized agreements on cooperation between local government and civil society organizations (18.1%).