This article examines whether the procedural framework of the Federal Tax Ombudsman (“FTO”) in Pakistan, established under the Establishment of the Office of Federal Tax Ombudsman Ordinance, 2000, to adjudicate complaints of maladministration arising under federal fiscal statutes, may be strengthened through the integration of Kleros, a blockchain-based crowdsourced dispute resolution mechanism. Drawing upon an original empirical dataset of one hundred and twenty-four cases registered between January 2023 and February 2025, the article finds that the average resolution period of cases before the FTO is approximately 191.3 days, rising to 503.3 days for complex matters that traverse review, representation, and remand, whereas the Kleros mechanism resolves disputes in an average of 13.23 days across 2,111 adjudicated cases. The article also situates its findings within institutional economics, identifying the FTO as a hierarchical governance structure and the Kleros mechanism as a market-based alternative. It views the difference in resolution times as a measure of transaction costs for taxpayers and administration. By measuring these costs, the article depicts that a market-based adjudicatory system significantly reduces them, enhancing institutional efficiency. It provides empirical evidence, illustrating the welfare gains from institutional substitution in transaction cost economics and institutional change. Against this benchmark, three integration models are proposed, namely a hybrid concurrent fact-finding model, a delegated crowdsourcing model with conditional executive review, and an amicus curiae model for technically complex matters such as the taxation of digital assets, each anchored in the updates introduced under Kleros V2, including Soulbound Tokens that enable expert-gated juror selection. The article identifies two structural gaps that necessitate reform, namely the revolving-door capture within the FTO secretariat and the jurisprudential bottleneck created at the Presidential secretariat following the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It concludes that phased, pilot-based integration, commencing with the amicus curiae model in respect of complex subject-matter complaints, is jurisprudentially defensible, economically efficient, and operationally feasible within the legal framework of Pakistan.
Local self-government represents a form of territorial decentralization. It exists in the states where local self-governments have been given the right to make autonomous decisions on local matters, without the interference of state power, through their local bodies which are chosen by the citizens or in which the citizens have direct vote. The elements which are constituent to the concept of local self-government in Serbia, as well as in the majority of states worldwide are: 1) it is guaranteed and regulated by the Constitution and more closely by law, 2) it is implemented in local communities where the citizens live and meet their everyday needs, 3) it is based on autonomous and original competences which are exercised without state interference, 4) citizens participate in making decisions on local matters directly, or indirectly via local bodies chosen in free elections and the state cannot interfere in their appointment. Self-government authority has been structured towards an assembly model which makes it different from the model of a rationalized parliamentarism at the state/republic level. This model asserts the election of the president of municipality or mayor, in case of cities. The solution from the previous Law on self-government from 2002 has been presented in this paper. It foresaw the direct election of municipality presidents and city mayors which entailed problems in local political practice. The legal framework of the present Law on selfgovernment from 2007 has also been discussed. It provides that municipality presidents and city mayors are elected by local representative bodies. This indirect election of municipality and city leaders in political practice may have the character of direct voting, which is the fact that should not be neglected.
The decentralized administrative system presupposes the existence, along with the national community, of territorial communities (local and regional), which is one of the main foundations of any democratic regime. Their efficient organization and functioning is directly dependent on the correct theoretical substantiation and the adequate transposition through the fundamental laws and the relevant normative framework of the basic principles regarding the local public administration. Doctrinal, but also according to advanced administrative practices, decentralization and local autonomy are the fundamental concepts that regulate the organization and functioning of decentralized communities / local public administration. In this sense, for the modernization of the local administration, it is necessary to ensure the adequate transposition of the principles of decentralization and local autonomy through the prism of the identification in the matter of administrative independence, the application of some fundamental financings.
The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia from 2006. has been the subject of sharp criticism of many legal experts. The way it was written, adopted and approved in the referendum, for sure it can’t be a praiseworthy example of legality and, with some of its controversial solutions, it inevitably indicates the necessity to be altered. These problematic Constitutional provisions are the subject of this article. Starting from the very preamble of the Constitution, unnecessarily discriminating position between the autonomous provinces, politicizing and the non-coexistence of the Constitutional text could be clearly observed. The Constitutional attack on the freedom of parliamentary mandate has been causing constant and numerous criticism of domestic and foreign public but at no time it did not make most of the parties hesitate to use their unfairly acquired right. Decentralization always causes a live debate, proposing various models and modalities, but only few of them could be possibly finalized by a general consensus. Serbian firm commitment to become a member of the European Union, at one point calls for a constitutional revision which would transfer the execution of certain part of sovereign rights to that supra-national organization. We could only hope that the political elite will not use any future reform to violate guaranteed constitutional rights, as was the case with the reform of the judiciary. Amending the Constitution has been always a difficult and time consuming process, hence the sooner the amending starts, the more likely are the chances to have it completed in democratic and tolerant atmosphere for the benefit of all citizens of Serbia.
The subject of this paper is the constitutional and legal regulation of local self-government system in the Republic of Macedonia, territorial division, the process of reforming and building this system since the independence of the Republic of Macedonia from the former federation of Yugoslavia. With the intention of functioning and materialization according to democratic principles, since the independence of Macedonia the system of local self-government has undergone through continuous reform process. These reforms first of all are mostly related to the territorial division of local self-government units, seeking the most appropriate model which would be appropriate to the general developments of Macedonia. In this paper is analyzed the role and the constitutional and legal position of local self-government units, in this case the municipality, as the only unit of local self-government, its legal status, competences, representative and executive bodies, financing and the process of decentralization. It is also analyzed the model of organization of local self-government in the city of Skopje, as a capital of the Republic, in the form of community of municipalities in the city and the impact of the Ohrid Agreement on the regulation and functioning of local self-government in Macedonia.
Before the Constitutional Court of Serbia, there is a pending case on reviewing constitutionality and legality of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina's Statute. 30 MPs, one civic organization and one individual initiated the proceedings, back in 2009, right after the Statute came into force. This article, which relies on author's amicus curiae brief in the mentioned case, offers three claims. First, the author claims that Serbia is not a typical unitary state, as for example, France or Romania, since it has gained several important characteristics of a regional state. Thus, for the time being, according to a vertical division of authority, Serbia can be defined as a state that is neither unitary nor regional, but rather a state 'in between' these two forms. Second, the author argues against an idea of textual dogmatization of the Constitution employed by the initiator of the proceedings (MPs), and after a deep analysis, rejects most of the arguments aimed at invalidating the provisions of the Statute, finding them unpersuasive and unfounded. Third, starting from the citizens' sovereignty, on which the political autonomy of Vojvodina is based (Articles 12, 176 and 182 of the Serbian Constitution of 2006), the author urges safeguarding the political decentralization guaranteed by the Constitution, since it gives more power to citizens in public decision-making and strengthens the democratic principle on which the Republic of Serbia is based. It is also stressed that a potential invalidation of the statutory provisions concerning the protection of national minorities, would endanger this protection, since, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, the constitutional protection is the most effective if implemented by the act of the regional authority of the territory where the members of national minorities traditionally live in a great number.
The literature of the last ten years contains numerous references to two opposite trends: on one hand, “the end of administrative law,” on the other, the “new administrative law.” According to the first body of literature, which is mainly of French and Belgian origins, administrative law has lost its peculiarities (thus giving rise to the increasing difficulty in defining its status and scope); it has become a hybrid, has been destabilized and destructured, and is now in ruins. This situation is—according to this narrative—the product of various, conflicting causes: globalization, constitutionalization, destatization, privatization, decentralization. As a result of the pressures stemming from these diverse trends, administrative law is slowly losing its raison d’être—its center: the state.1 On the contrary, according to the second point of view, held mainly by German observers, a new administrative law is developing, due to a process of change, modernization, and reform. This new, or postmodern, administrative law is more open than the old administrative law, and is focused on “steering” rather than on ordering. This new administrative law is—in this view—the product of the new role of the state as a promoter, as a facilitator, as a risk regulator, and as the helmsman of economy and society. It therefore requires a new, more interdisciplinary, approach.2 Should we share the view that administrative law has reached the final stage of its life, or, on the contrary, that it is undergoing a process of intense change and renewal? What prevails now: continuity and decline, or development and modernization? Before providing an answer to these questions, I shall address the more general issue of continuity and change in administrative law. For a long time, administrative law was conceived as the domain of stability and continuity. Otto Mayer, in the introduction to the third edition of his Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht, observed that it was a common opinion of his times that “Verfassungsrecht vergeht, Verwaltungsrecht besteht” (constitutional law passes, administrative law remains).3 This conclusion was strengthened by the dogmatic approach adopted by administrative law scholarship in many European countries, where the dogmatic reinterpretation of Roman law by the German scholar Friedrich von Savigny was taken for granted and imported into the study of administrative law. For instance, in Italy, the founding father of administrative law scholarship, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, espoused the “systematic approach” developed by Savigny and by scholars of private law. Therefore, concepts and methods possessing a high degree of stability in the field of private law became familiar to administrative law scholarship. Administrative law was founded on timeless tenets or dogmas derived from private law. Continuity in paradigms of study paralleled the idea of continuity in administrative institutions. Over the last twenty years, both assumptions have become obsolete. Administrative institutions have undergone impressive changes. Consider the accumulation of these: globalization, privatization, citizens’ participation, new global fiscal responsibilities. The very idea that administrative law concepts could remain stable over time has been abandoned. The fast-developing phenomena in administrative law have rendered the field’s cultural paradigms inadequate. New concepts and ideas have penetrated the literature: new public management, governance, accountability, expert bodies, steering. But, as continuity and change go hand in hand, it is difficult to study this mosaic of contradictions using the old approaches. The purpose of this paper is to catalog and briefly review the major changes that have occurred in Europe over the last twenty years, and to mention the resulting changes produced in the methods used to study administrative law.4 Discontinuity in the realm of administrative institutions requires discontinuity in the approaches adopted for studying the new administrative law. The scholarship examining this new administrative law needs reorientation and a new framework, capable of explaining the changes that have taken place. According to Otto Mayer, “[t]he administration is the activity of the State for the accomplishment of its ends.”5 Therefore, administrative law originated as the product of the state, but has now become dependent on other powers of transnational, global, and local dimensions. Many complex phenomena are currently unfolding: the growth of ultra-national and intra-national powers; increasing “dédoublement fonctionnel” (functional splitting), in which national governments act both as sovereign powers and as “delegates” of ultra-national bodies; the development of certain basic principles of administrative law at global, national, and local levels (e.g., in Europe, the principle of “good administration”); open statehood (“offene Staatlichkeit”) and increased communication between national legal orders, thanks to which principles may circulate (e.g., the principle of proportionality, first developed in the German legal order, was then imported in the European Union, and from there into many national legal orders); development of principles that are shared by several legal orders, at the global, national, and local levels, which therefore become universal (e.g., the right to a hearing, the duty to give reasons, judicial review), and thus provide increased opportunities for popular participation, but also produce increasing conflicts; rights are not recognized only by national constitutions, but also by global rules and imposed by these on national legal orders; national governments are subject to a contradictory trend: on one hand, their sovereignty is diminished; on the other, they acquire new tasks (e.g., control of efforts against global terrorism or global warming) that they could not possibly have gained in previous times, but that they are now obliged to share with other states (for that reason, the relevant literature contains several remarks on the state’s declining sovereignty and on the need to “bring the State back in”). The most important of these developments is the growth of a global space and a global polity. These are not only arenas in which contending forces operate, but also sets of organizations claiming control not over territories and people, but over functions.6 These developments require administrative law scholarship to be denationalized. Thus far, nationalism has been the prevailing mode through which administrative law scholarship has been conducted. But, as common core principles have developed at the national, transnational, and global levels, administrative law scholarship must give up this traditional nation-based approach. Indeed, for example, to understand the European Union, it is necessary to draw inspiration from the imperial paradigm rather than the state one. Like the empires, the Union is a compound structure. Attempts to establish a common European area of research in the field of public law are already under way.7 Representative democracy and the traditional legitimacy paradigm (featuring governing bodies vs. governed) have been exhausted. In all countries, and globally, public powers and civil societies are in search of new sources of legitimacy, and new ways of holding power accountable have been tested. National and supranational legal orders are developing in two different directions. Vertical accountability is increasingly juxtaposed to horizontal accountability (inter-institutional accountability).8 National governments respond to other national governments and to supranational institutions, and independent regulatory agencies balance ministerial bodies. Power has shifted to “technocrat–guardians” who are shielded from political influence.9 Delegation of power through elections is now flanked by participation in the decision-making process: major urban planning, environmental, and regulatory decisions require public inquiries through which individuals can make their voices heard. Popular participation and deliberative democracy complement representative democracy. These constitutional developments also affect administrative law. At the global level, administrative networking and shared administration are made necessary by increased political cooperation in intergovernmental global institutions and in hybrid global regulatory bodies. At the national level, collaboration and horizontal accountability are products of the increased fragmentation of national executives into many different agencies. To enable participation, detailed procedural regulations are necessary; therefore, administrative regulation increasingly consists of regulation of procedures (freedom grows in the interstices of procedure). As a consequence of these developments, an entirely new area of study is opened up to the scrutiny of administrative law scholarship, which, in the past, developed essentially along vertical lines. This requires renewed attention to cooperation, codecision, and reciprocal accountability, as well as to procedures, disclosure, and access to information, notice and comment, hearings, and reasoned decisions. In particular, the proceduralization of administrative law makes a new approach necessary, because administrative decisions no longer take center stage and have been replaced by procedure. Administrative law was initially established as a “special” law, separate from private law. Globalization, overburdened governments, privatization, and new public management techniques have all de-emphasized and blurred the public–private divide. Private law invades the space of public law and erodes its specificity.10 In the global polity, hybrid and private bodies are as numerous as public bodies. National governments make increasing use of private law. Contracts between the state and private persons, once almost unknown (as they challenged the very idea of state sovereignty), are now a common feature of state activity. Consequently, the state becomes dependent upon collaboration with civil society. With the emergence of the enabling state, the focus of public activity has shifted toward measures aimed at financing benefits through the market. Therefore, a large part of social welfare has become a lucrative, privatized, commercial, and for-profit activity.11 Outsourcing and public–private partnerships increase efficiency and sectionalism, which in turn contribute to the fragmentation of the state. On the contrary, private institutions increasingly apply administrative law rules (two examples are the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by-laws, which contain a sort of administrative procedure act and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) regulations12). As public bodies are not necessarily subject to administrative law, so too private bodies are not necessarily subject to private law. Topics such as state-owned enterprises, public–private partnerships, public incentives to private companies, and market-oriented regulation thus become crucial for the analysis of administrative law. These developments make it necessary to abandon the public law regime paradigm, to de-publicize the approach adopted by administrative law scholarship and to study the ambiguities and the richness of the interconnections between public and private law. Between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Weberian-style administration was a “machine,” with linear development and linear decision-making processes. According to this mechanical form of regulation, the executive branch was ruled from above (politicians governed bureaucrats), agencies developed according to popular demand for services as interpreted by parliaments, decision-making processes ran directly from the initiator (usually a high-level politician) to the deciding officer (again a politician), through the machinery of the executive agencies. Over the past fifty years, the picture has become more complex. Administration, politics, and society now form a triangle; there is no longer a clear dividing line between administration and society; negotiation runs side by side with command and control; as soon as new services require new structures, these new structures establish links with their institutional clients and attract new clients (both internally and externally); decision-making processes are replaced or accompanied by consultation, mediation, Parliament-like procedures, or, simply, muddling through. “The old image of a hierarchical public administration single-handedly implementing well-defined policy goals set down in legislation must today compete with a vision of the administrative process as open-ended, collaborative, and networked.”13 Administrative law scholarship must adapt its paradigms and research techniques to this new reality. It must be prepared to study administrative law less as a mechanical structure than as a market, where many intersecting negotiations take place. “To capture the new reality, comparative administrative law should be framed no longer as the rules and judicial-redress mechanisms that guarantee the effective working of administration, but rather as an accountability network through which civil servants are embedded in their liberal-democratic social orders.”14 This approach requires paying more attention to the rules of change and to a different conception of administrative law, which is to be seen not as a static set of rules and mechanisms, but as a dynamic system, capable of interacting with its environment. The executive branch, which once served the elected politicians and the state-provider of a few basic services (e.g., defense, public order, tax collection), has now become society’s largest artifact. It has also become increasingly separated from politics, becoming, rather, ever more embedded in society. The state is no longer extraneous to society, as it is not extraneous to the economy. These developments are noticeable if the size of government apparatuses is measured: a century ago, public employment occupied between one to five percent of the labor force, a figure that has risen now to between 10 and 50 percent.15 The state has become the largest employer and the most important financial intermediary. Further, it is the main actor in all major social and economic events. The emergence of the administrative state has rendered regulation pervasive. Moreover, the administrative “machine” has been able, over time, to adjust to political and societal pressures, first by expanding, then by reducing, and now by re-expanding its own dimensions. The administrative structure of government has become embedded in politics, in society, and in the economy, reproducing the main features of a corporatist state, where different branches of the executive or agencies become “captured” by their constituent interests, but still “capture” a certain degree of sectorial legitimacy from them. Therefore, while constitutional law is still organized around a center (Parliament, the government, a supreme court), administrative law has lost its center and has become fragmented and multipolar. Therefore, administration and its law cannot be understood if the administrative culture of a country and its civic values are not studied. For example, the degree of industrialization and the experience of wars and the need to maintain large armies all have a significant impact on the management of government, both in terms of diffuse managerial cultures and popular attitudes of skepticism or deference vis-à-vis the state. The next task for administrative law scholarship shall be that of bringing society and politics back into the study of the administration, analyzing the many links between society and administrative agencies, in which politics often acts as an intermediary. Traditionally, administrative law was based on the bipolarity between the “administré” and the “autorité publique.” In the last thirty years, two developments have occurred. The “administré,” subject to administrative authorities, has become a citizen, fully entitled to rights vis-à-vis the government: for example, he has a right to be informed, to make his voice heard, to receive reasoned decisions, and to have administrative decisions reviewed by independent courts. The “rights revolution” has produced many major changes in the field of administrative law, as well. Broadened suffrage, organized societies, and the fragmentation of executives have replaced bipolarity with multipolarity. Today, the administrative landscape is dominated by multipolar a of public bodies and conflicting private For example, there are numerous state and agencies in the field of private that with and The state is penetrated by conflicting private interests, which, state agencies must address (e.g., and economic also an administrative and require administrative or political far, administrative law scholarship has focused on the only as an of public orders or benefits and on the between the State and New administrative law scholarship has a new It must a view of and governing administrative not only as regulations of administrative power but as of citizens’ rights vis-à-vis administrative on agencies, to the of private It must study the in which conflicting one and and in which agencies act as and is subject to the an administrative law the law not public in their are and such as and in which the executive is from legal and once are now increasingly as to the of law and to the principle of judicial therefore, a between the executive powers and social for institutions. Moreover, there are where agencies must address complex and in a or the principle of (e.g., in and cannot be by of the executive makes to For example, it and or which are These developments open up an entirely new set of for administrative law scholarship. administrative law scholarship has on the of judicial decisions, and institutional The new scholarship has a more difficult to at institutional the of and judicial decisions. It must with and of and in to study these In the past, in the European and wars the main of changes in administrative law. the of and of wars has to an This has an impact on as they are from major change, or subject to a change that more Administrative law is more dependent upon and previous therefore, institutional is the Administrative law therefore consists of and “the approaches have not Administrative law has been a process of to societal the but their has been in the Moreover, administrative institutions and are by law in state is a The that administrative development are ideas and economic constitutional social time and according to This requires of the of of their and of their of rules and institutions are regulations which changes. The study of these complex structures first an attention to and the in which they to the different to the and it requires an analysis of the between the different to establish they and which rules and institutions As become increasingly legal become more National legal orders are no longer the and of institutions, and between are open legal space national The has become a where it is to go and sets of principles from one legal to are not only legal but also and and policy are at the in administrative law have This not that national legal orders have become and a major role in institutions and from one These developments require two major changes in administrative law scholarship. On one hand, they require it is increasingly that the law of one country cannot be fully understood if it is in Administrative law scholarship cannot to one legal Moreover, at this requires a that the study of the law as in and of law in of legal legal and and legal On the other hand, these developments require and into the picture of legal and the and impact of common ideas and principles in numerous legal In other the developments require the For example, to study the between common law and legal orders, it is necessary to the state on one hand, and on the the of the of law, and and their peculiarities and institutions and as to the state and the of developed in to the German of and its the global and the many national of “new public the of administrative and of the principle of the of and in a common judicial review of administrative the of the different national and as a result of increased communication between legal As administrative law developed first in Europe, it is also important to study the common European of the national administrative scholarship developed as a to mainly and must now more than as it should also and In the past, it was a to individuals for a of legal administrative law scholarship to its own Today, the upon it have and require new techniques of and not one Indeed, it is to state that its own of is no but rather and political of the with the important that administrative law scholarship should not be by a and of certain basic that legal Administrative law must its in the field of social and and its links with it to study the role by the State in the economy, the economic approach to is there that the economic analysis of public law can to the scholars of administrative the executive branch of government is embedded in the realm of politics, and if administration is part of politics, can the study of administrative law political can political in terms of methods and to administrative law and institutional are the in the field of administrative law. Therefore, is an of analysis for administrative law In a and open in which legal orders and become “the national of legal is a legal scholarship with the to be not national, but cannot be by the and must the idea that there is only one form of legal of law not necessarily an that a and organized system, or a must be It therefore, to of on a European on a universal
The paper presents the current state of the process of agencification in Croatia, pointing out both the process and the institutional design. The agency model in Croatia consists of several types of more or less autonomous administrative organizations, situated at different distances from the central government. The most evident pressures for agencification come from decentralization, managerial responses and Europeanization. The reversal of the process in recent years has mostly happened because of the need for rationalization of the public administration system, which is also under pressure because of the economic crisis. The key problems of the agency model are over politicization on the one hand, and insufficient and inadequate control on the other. The adequate legal framework for agencies would enhance institutionalization of the agency model, ensuring effectiveness and legal certainty and maintaining a sufficient level of independence.