Abstract
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Many countries and organisations strive toward a smart and better regulation. To achieve this goal, we must use certain theoretical principles of good governance (transparency, participation etc.) in concrete regulatory processes when adopting new or amending already existing legislation. Better regulation also leads to a more reasonable allocation of resources, and, therefore, in turn, to the development of democracy and the rationalization of public governance, which is especially important when dealing or regulating a sector which enjoys a certain level of independence from state authority. A balancing of interests, of all involved stakeholders (including state authority), should be one of the main goals of such regulatory process if we want to achieve the goals set in the legislation in real life, as a result of wider public acceptance of adopted rules and procedures. An in depth RIA (ex ante) analysis should be a part of the process to allow the regulator to foresee the results new regulation will cause, and therefore help him choose the optimal solutions among possible alternatives in the relation to the regulation goals (on one hand independent and on the other transparent functioning of the NGOs in Slovenia). As such the paper will present an empirical case study of how, the usage of principles of good governance, when used correctly in concrete regulatory procedures, results in the outcome of positive experience such as is the case of regulating the NGO sector in Slovenia. The latter adopted its first "Non-governmental Organizations Act (NGOs Act)" in March of 2018, after more than a decade of ignoring different initiatives from the NGO sector of the need for a general regulation, that would set certain minimum standards and criteria that apply to all NGOs. The process can serve as a case study for other countries in similar situations. The analysis will show, how the pursuit of certain good governance principles in concrete regulatory processes, especially when regulating a field of society that inter alia enjoy a certain independence from state authority, can result in regulation that enjoys a wide public support. In that connection, dogmatic, normative, empirical and comparative (Croatia, Serbia) methods will be applied. The paper will be based on the hypothesis that (I) when regulating areas of society which enjoy a special independence (autonomy) of state authority, principles of good governance should be applied to an even higher level - especially the principle of stakeholder participation which should be applied in the early phases of the regulatory process - to ensure a wide acceptance of new adopted regulation. The whole process shows that engaging stakeholders in the early stages of the process of preparing (draft) regulation can bring positive results in the end outcome. The paper will put emphasis on concrete measures (improved independent future funding of NGO sector and its transparency etc.), deriving from before mentioned cooperation between state authorities and NGO representatives throughout the legislative process. The regulatory process of adopting the NGO legislation was one of the positive cases taking into account one of the OECD key recommendations for Slovenia, suggesting that better regulation agenda should move beyond administrative burden reduction and strengthen the institutional frameworks and ministries’ capacities to effectively use RIA, stakeholder engagement, and ex post evaluation.
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