Obilježja pravne kulture u Hrvatskoj

Abstract

The thesis deals with the concept of legal culture and its characteristics in the population of adult citizens of the Republic of Croatia. Although we are dealing with one of the key topics in the sociology of law, popularized since the early 1970s, when Lawrence Friedman coined the concept, in the Croatian scientific community, it is assessed only from the field of legal scholarship. It is often used as a synonym for concepts such as legal system or legal tradition, while its social determinants remain unknown. At the same time, in international scholarship, the concept of legal culture does not have a homogeneous meaning. Critical approaches problematize its definition, constitutive elements, and legal culture levels, which lead to the lack of the concept's explanatory power. Hence, in order to fulfill the primary goal of this thesis – to determine the characteristics of legal culture in Croatia – I developed a theoreticalconceptual framework of the subject of the analysis. Following the general assumptions of the socio-legal approach, the concept of legal culture has been built using the sociological perspective as a stepping stone for empirical research. Similar to Almond and Verba's concept of political culture, the theoretical basis was built on Talcott Parsons' theories of structural functionalism. By using the system theory and the AGIL model, legal culture has been defined as a part of the legal system that fulfills the function of its legitimization. Additionally, by the theory of social action, legal culture has been described as a set of orientations that determine the interaction of citizens with the legal system, which are mediated by common value standards. In the analytical sense, legal culture is based on three types of motivational orientations paired with value orientations that shape the legal system and, at the same time, are standards of orientations of individuals towards the legal system. Cognitive orientation is represented by the expectations from the legal system based on its actual and potential functions. Cathectic orientation describes the perception of the legal system based on its actions and expectation-fulfillment. Evaluative orientation, which is the key aspect of the legal culture, is defined by the behavior of citizens in relation to the legal system. Through the analysis of legal principles, the rule of law, justice, and legitimacy have been defined as value components that shape these orientations. In the end, legal culture has been defined as a set of expectations from legal system based on the rule of law, perception of the justice of the legal system, and the behavior in relation with the legal system that determines its legitimacy. Based on this theoretical-conceptual framework, the qualitative part of the research, semi-structured interviews with law experts were conducted. Through the thematic analysis, indicators of the three types of legal culture orientations were determined and then used to construct the instrument for measuring legal culture composed of the three orientation scales. The second, quantitative part of the research survey was conducted on a representative sample of adult citizens of Croatia, by which the characteristics of legal culture were determined, and the theoretical assumptions about the connection between orientations were examined. The legal culture in Croatia is determined by the high level of expectation that the legal system operates by the rule of law, a pronounced perception of its injustice and division in behavior towards the legal system, with somewhat stronger emphasis on behaviors that give legitimacy to the legal system. Amongst the sociodemographic variables, the region has the strongest impact on variations in all segments of legal culture. In addition to sociodemographic variables, differences in orientations towards the legal system are determined by personal and close person experiences with the legal system and attitudes on media presentation of the legal system. Analysis showed that from all the independent variables included, expectations from the legal system and perceptions of the legal system most strongly shape behavior towards the legal system. However, the overall variances in behavior towards the legal system remain largely unexplained.