Assistant Paula Šamanić Matijević defended her doctoral dissertation entitled Improving the Quality of Legislation and Better Regulation Policy Instruments on 26 February 2026 at the Faculty of Law in Rijeka. The defense was held before the Committee for the Public Defense of the Doctoral Dissertation, composed of Associate Professor Dr. Sanja Grbić (University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law) as Chair of the Committee, Professor Dr. Marko Šikić (Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb), and Associate Professor Dr. Bruna Žuber (Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana) as members, in the presence of her supervisor, Professor Dr. Dario Đerđa, and the Director of the Doctoral Programme, Professor Dr. Ivana Kunda, as well as numerous colleagues and friends.
In her doctoral dissertation, Paula Šamanić Matijević analyses the quality of legislation and the procedures of its adoption as key factors in ensuring legal certainty and the rule of law.
In the first part of the dissertation, she identifies typical manifestations of poor legislative quality, including inconsistent legal terminology, contradictions between norms in different legislative acts as well as within the same act, impermissible retroactive effect of legislation, the inadequacy of regulations to achieve their intended objectives and other forms of normative deficiencies.
The research is grounded in legisprudence as a theoretical framework for a comprehensive examination of the legislative life cycle, from the identification of a social problem, through the drafting and adoption of legislation, to its implementation and subsequent evaluation. The dissertation establishes that, in the Republic of Croatia, a satisfactory normative framework for the implementation of the better regulation policy exists; however, it simultaneously points to its structural and functional shortcomings.
For the purpose of a systematic discussion, the author develops a theoretical foundation for assessing the quality of legislation by establishing substantive and formal criteria for its evaluation. The better regulation policy, as an emanation of the doctrine of good governance, is aimed at improving legislative quality and strengthening institutional accountability.
Based on the conducted research, it is concluded that further improvement of the system requires the establishment of new rules for legislative drafting, the development of specialised training programmes for legislative drafters and the application of more technologically advanced tools in the legislative process. Particular attention is also devoted to the evaluation of legislation in terms of its implementation, results and effects, as an aspect that remains insufficiently developed in Croatian practice, but which is expected to be normatively strengthened through the adoption of new legislation enacted in 2024.