Coherence of strategic document goals in Croatia: education, youth and encouragement to read

Nikola Baketa, PhD is the author of the scientific paper “Coherence of strategic document goals in Croatia: education, youth and encouragement to read”. The paper is published in the journal “Croatian and Comparative Public Administration”, 22 (4).

The goal of the paper is to provide initial insights into the coherence of Croatian public policies through an exploratory analysis of three strategic documents: “New Colours of Knowledge – Strategy of Education, Science and Technology”, the “National Youth Programme for the Period 2014–2017”, and the “National Reading Support Strategy for the Period 2017–2022”. First of all, in order to select goal subcategories, the frequency of goals within these subcategories in each of the documents is used. Next, a qualitative comparison of the meaning of individual goals in the selected strategies provides an insight into the coherence of their content. The analysis has determined that the thematic affinity of individual strategic documents represents a strong basis for achieving a wide scope of coherence, that focus on similar and overlapping target groups contributes to coherence, and that the focus of a strategic document on a specific problem results in a smaller scope of coherence. The main finding of the paper is that coherence is observed in sector-oriented and value-oriented goals. In these subcategories, there is coherence among goals from all three strategic documents. Based on this insight, it is possible to conclude that it is important to use both qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to observe all facets of coherence. At the conceptual level, research has shown that coherence is multidimensional, and the best way to cover all its nuances is on a continuum that shows how coherence varies from the formulation phase to the implementation phase.

The paper is available at the link.