Abstract
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Due to the rapidly growing complexity of administrative relationships towards authorities, globalization, digitalization and other changes in society, procedures and procedural law acquire more and more important role, especially in enabling social rights. Namely, in social matters, procedural elements at the levels of both regulation and enforcement of rules should be reflected as factors of the welfare state, the rule of law and good administration, and not take procedural rules as an excuse for a bureaucratic attitude. The changing social milieu particularly caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic requires rapid and effective solutions from the authorities such as centres of social work (CSW), albeit when they have been enforced they might cause a clash of competing good governance goals and affect constitutional rights. Nevertheless, in the new reality of constant crises, the welfare state is expected to provide essential social security for the most vulnerable people, have proven to be crucial.
From the perspective of multifunctionality of social procedures, including their casual-functional role in social relationships and their potential for the critical value-based evaluation of the current regulation, the rationale for this study is to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on conducting special administrative procedures led by CSWs (16) in Slovenia. Our research question is how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the selected social procedures within the jurisdiction of CSWs in Slovenia, for instance by red tape reduction. Special focus of the research will be dedicated to the informational calculation of social rights, such as child benefits, kindergarten subsidies or state scholarships, as by far the most numerous procedures of social rights in Slovenia, i.e. over one mio annually. The research will be conducted mostly from the legal point of view but will also address empirical issues based on the available statistics, survey and structured interviews with the representatives of sector-specific ministry and CSWs, as well as the selected case studies.
The paper aims to identify key guidelines for understanding procedural rights for social goals, by analysing the relevant rules and regulations, and administrative practice in Slovenia in 2020 and 2021, e.g. the (lack of) support of information system in CSWs, the (dis)advantages of simplifications in administrative procedures when applying social rights, benefits and failures in carrying out informational calculation of child benefits and similar rights. Ultimately, the aim is to evaluate these practices from the aspect of the rule of law, since some have presumably contributed to strengthening of this principle while other might have deteriorated its core. If it will be established that the Covid-19 pandemic has not had a significant impact on social procedures in terms of providing parties an adequate level of protection of their constitutional rights against the potentially arbitrary interference of the state, their multifunctional potential in the context of good public governance has not been exploited. Consequently, we will identify the necessary de lege ferenda solutions and/or organizational-informational improvements.
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