Social Protection System In Macedonia: Centralized Governance versus Decentralization

In the last twenty years the Republic of Macedonia experienced significant changes of its political, economic and social system. The shift from mono-party to plural political system and transition from planned to market economy was followed by escalation of serious social tensions. The society was faced with intensification of the existing and emergence of new social problems, including those with most severe consequences, such as an increase of the unemployment rate, poverty of the households and decrease of the living standard. This imposed the need for changes of the social protection system with the goal to make it more responsive to the newly created conditions. The more intensive reforms of the social protection system started in the early 2000s and were based on the guiding principles of decentralisation, pluralisation and deinstitutionalisation. The reforming processes were at large initiated and driven by the international financial and donor organisations. Even though the goals of the transformation were well defined, the reforming processes were not thoughtfully designed, facing weaknesses in the practical implementation. The conducted researches in the area of decentralisation continuously point out to the low capacity of public and private local actors to undertake and advance their social protection roles. This paper is going to focus on the above and related problems and challenges entailed by the shift from centralised to decentralised governance in th