Administrative contracts were introduced into the positive law (legislation) of the Republic of Croatia by the General Administrative Procedure Act in 2010. The paper discusses the basic theoretical reasoning and legal characteristics of administrative contracts. The legal framework of administrative contracts in the legal system of the Republic of Croatia is analysed following the Law on General Administrative Procedure, the Law on Administrative Disputes and special laws that expressly regulate administrative contracts. Laws that recognise contracts with only certain characteristics of administrative contracts are also considered. The paper elaborates on the thesis that the general regulation of administrative contracts in the Croatian legal system is only a framework that needs to be filled with special laws from different administrative areas. Such legislative regulation leads to an increased need for administrative and judicial protection in individual cases. It places additional requirements on the administration, and especially on the administrative courts, for the consistency of their administrative practice and judicial case law, which must be deprived of insufficient practical clarifications of positive legislation and free from arbitrariness.