Mihovil Škarica was born in 1982 in Split. He graduated at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb in 2006 and has been working at the same institution since – currently as an associate professor at the Department of Administrative Science. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb in 2013 with the dissertation Local Government Functions and Inter-municipal Cooperation. He holds lectures in several courses at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level: Administrative Science, Public Administration, Local Government and Decentralization, Local Public Services, Local and Regional Development, Multi-level Governance etc. In 2016-2017 period he served as the State Secretary in the Ministry of Public Administration and as the Chairman of the Board in the State School for Public Administration. In his professional work, Škarica regularly collaborates with public institutions, media, NGOs and political parties.
He gave lectures at more than 30 domestic and international conferences and has actively participated in numerous roundtables, public discussion panels and professional meetings. He has published more than 40 papers, chapters and other professional texts in Croatian and English. Škarica has been involved in the organization of several domestic and international conferences. He regularly acts as a reviewer for various journals and books. Since 2020, he has been engaged in European Commission project European Public Administration Country Knowledge (EUPACK 3, EUPACK 2021 i EUPACK 2022 as a national expert for public administration reform. As a local government expert, he took part in the EU’s international research project Self-rule index for local authorities in the EU, Council of Europe and OECD countries 1990-2020, as well as in numerous other domestic and international research projects. As an expert consultant, he has been involved in several World Bank’s projects and studies on public administration reform, institutional development and policy evaluation.
Since 2021, he has served as the executive editor of Croatian and Comparative Public Administration journal and since 2022 as the editor of Contemporary Public Administration Collection at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. He is a member of the Secretary of the Institute of Public Administration. Škarica is a full member of Croatian Academy of Legal Sciences. In the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he is a member of the Scientific Council for Government Administration, Judicature and the Rule of Law. At the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration, Škarica has been the member of the Council for local and regional government reform and of the working group for the development of the National Plan for Public Administration Development 2022-2027. He is fluent in both writing and speaking in English and Italian.
His research and professional interests are mostly related to the legal, organizational, functional and democratic aspects of local government and its particular institutions, inter-governmental relations and multilevel governance, local public services, inter-municipal cooperation, decentralization and public administration reforms.
