Abstract
What has come to be called the ‘principle of subsidiarity’ is widely taken to be a general norm of decentralisation. The principle is thought to mean that authority should be allocated to the ‘lowest level possible’ in society; typically, from the state to some intermediate or ‘lesser’ community. This chapter argues that this is a significant misunderstanding of the principle, resulting from lack of attention to the social ontology underlying its original formulation in Catholic social thought. Such an ontology yields a strong account of social pluralism, namely an affirmation that there is a plurality of human communities necessary for human flourishing, each legitimately claiming a sphere of independent self-governance and properly resisting incorporation by or subordination to other communities, notably the state. Subsidiarity is not a principle of decentralisation, but rather, as Russell Hittinger has put it, a principle of ‘non-absorption’. The chapter opens with a brief overview of the emergence of ‘social pluralism’ in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, of which Catholic social thought was one distinctive strand. The main body of the chapter expounds the meaning and implications of subsidiarity in the light of the larger social ontology it presupposes. The final section tests the contemporary political relevance of subsidiarity by asking how far it is exemplified in the recent ‘Big Society’ idea propounded by the British Conservative Party.
This chapter draws on material first published in the following: Chaplin (1993, 2010, 2011b). An earlier version was presented at a seminar on theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen in January 2013 and I thank participants for their critical feedback.
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Notes
- 1.
This is how Denis O’Brien understands it in O’Brien (2007). He also speaks of subsidiarity as ‘the primacy of the individual’ (p. 236).
- 2.
The principle is explicitly endorsed in the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 (Treaty of the European Union), art 5(3), but it achieved recognition in EU law well before that. On its meaning within the EU, see Aroney (2011). A valuable earlier analysis of the meaning of the principle in the EU is Centre for Economic Policy Research (1993).
- 3.
It is important to acknowledge that there are different political readings of subsidiarity, and of Catholic social thought generally. Contributors to Booth, ed., Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy read Catholic social thought through the lens of economic liberalism. Clifford Longley reads it through the lens of British social democracy (Longley 2009). My reading is partly informed by that found in postwar continental European Christian Democracy.
- 4.
- 5.
Maritain (1951, p. 23).
- 6.
Maritain (1973, pp. 163–164).
- 7.
Pluralist theories emerged partly in reaction to the persistent marginalisation of intermediate associations in many of the leading social and political theories of the modern age, such as those of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Marx and Bentham. Montesquieu, Hegel, De Tocqueville and (to some extent) J. S. Mill are leading exceptions.
- 8.
Leo XIII (1954).
- 9.
For an English translation, see Skillen (1991).
- 10.
Pius XI (1960).
- 11.
- 12.
The following account draws particularly on Rommen (1945).
- 13.
‘Communities’ in the Catholic thought of this period are classed as either natural or supernatural. Here I focus mainly on the natural ones.
- 14.
RN, §51.
- 15.
Oswald Von-Nell Breuning, who was commissioned to write the first draft of QA, made this very clear in various places. See, e.g., Von-Nell Breuning (1981).
- 16.
However, Russell Hittinger has noticed a striking exception to this in Saint Thomas’ Opusculum entitled Contra impugnantes (1256). Written to defend the newly formed mendicant orders, it contains a remarkable account of a natural right to form free associations, appealing to the inherent good of ‘communication of gifts’ among free persons. This work is cited by Leo XIII in RN (§51) precisely to support his defence of a natural right to form ‘private societies’ such as workingmens’ associations. Hittinger (2003).
- 17.
These include European thinkers such as Heinrich Pesch, Heinrich Rommen, Johannes Messner and Jacques Maritain, and Americans Yves Simon and John Courtenay Murray.
- 18.
(London: Catholic Truth Society, 1991). http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html
- 19.
O’Donovan (2005, p. 57).
- 20.
John XXIII (1984).
- 21.
Calvez and Perrin (1961, p. 118).
- 22.
For a detailed account of the historical and intellectual roots of the idea of subsidiarity against the background of European social thought, see Leys (1995), Part 1.
- 23.
Quoted in Calvez and Perrin (1961, p. 122).
- 24.
Messner (1949, p. 196).
- 25.
Hittinger (2008).
- 26.
- 27.
See Chaplin (2005).
- 28.
Messner (1949, p. 177).
- 29.
Kuyper (1998).
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
Calvez and Perrin (1961, p. 336).
- 33.
Calvez and Perrin (1961, p. 332).
- 34.
Sollicitudo rei Socialis (SRS) (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1998), § 38. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis_en.html
- 35.
This might be a way to recapture, in contemporary terms, the truth within the medieval metaphor of society as an ‘organism’ with many ‘parts’. This metaphor is, in turn, indebted to the Pauline image of the ‘Body of Christ’ with its diverse members each offering their own gifts and deserving of their own honour, as in, e.g., 1 Corinthians p. 12.
- 36.
David Cameron, ‘The Big Society’, Scuiet http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/11/David_Cameron_The_Big_Society.aspx
- 37.
There is a debate over whether the Big Society idea still animates government policy, not least because the substantial reduction in public funding resulting from the government’s stringent deficit-reduction programme has starved the voluntary sector – one of the programme’s key deliverers – of cash. Yet while the term itself is now little used, the raft of legislative and policy changes since 2010 have already made significant impacts across several areas of policy. For a description and analysis of the programme in the light of Catholic social thought, see Loughlin et al. (2013) (henceforth cited in the text as VHI Report). I use the past tense in my account of the programme to indicate that I am referring to the stated early intentions of the programme, not to imply that it is entirely dead a time of writing (December 2013). For an assessment of its success and current vitality up to 2012, see VHI Report, on which my account draws.
- 38.
The office’s website announced in 2010 that it ‘works across government departments to translate the Big Society agenda into practical policies, provides support to voluntary and community organisations and is responsible for delivering a number of key Big Society programmes’, namely the Big Society Bank, the National Citizenship Service Scheme, Community Organizers, and Community First. This particular wording is no longer on the office’s website (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/office-for-civil-society-appoints-strategic-partners) but the objectives remain in place.
- 39.
Ian Duncan-Smith, former Conservative party leader and founder of the conservative-leaning think-tank Centre for Social Justice; and the ‘Radical Orthodox’ theologian Phillip Blond representing a ‘Red Toryism’ influential in the think tank ResPublica, which he directs. VHI Report questions how far Duncan-Smith’s thinking was actually informed by Catholic social thought.
- 40.
VHI Report, p. 21.
- 41.
Quoted in VHI Report, p. 26.
- 42.
- 43.
VHI Report, p. 41.
- 44.
Another goal was to ‘empower’ communities beyond government, but this seems to have added little to what was already envisaged under the first and third components of the programme.
- 45.
See, e.g., van Kersbergen (1995). Van Kersbergen argues that one distinctive feature of such regimes was that they were ‘passive, transfer-oriented systems’ (p. 4). That is, instead of using welfare policy to refashion social institutions (such as the family or faith-based welfare providers) according to larger, state-determined objectives, they harnessed the energies of such bodies as they found them, thus, I argue, adhering more closely to the principle of non-absorption.
- 46.
There are other forms of administrative decentralisation, such as from central government departments to regional offices (sometimes termed “deconcentration”) or from one tier of a central department to a lower one. Both could be helpful for effective governance.
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Chaplin, J. (2014). Subsidiarity and Social Pluralism. In: Evans, M., Zimmermann, A. (eds) Global Perspectives on Subsidiarity. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 37. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8810-6_5
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