Abstract
Subsidiarity holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more distant level of power which can be done as well by a smaller and closer level of power. In other words, anything that can be performed by a more decentralized entity should not be done by a more centralized one. As such, subsidiarity can be seen as a bulwark of limited government and individual liberty, conflicting with the desire for bureaucratic centralization which is characteristic of the welfare state. First, this chapter contains a general discussion of subsidiarity and its ability to enhance democracy and individual liberty. This discussion is followed by a critical analysis of how individual autonomy and dignity are undermined by the welfare state. Finally, the chapter discusses the centralising, statist nature of the Brazilian government, thus highlighting subsidiarity’s potential to enhance democracy and individual liberty in Brazil.
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- 1.
See Chap. 4 of this book.
- 2.
John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, Para 13.
- 3.
Ibid., Para 48.
- 4.
Ibid., Para 48.
- 5.
Walker (2001, p. 37).
- 6.
See Zimmermann (2000, p. 7).
- 7.
Twomey (2008, p. 59).
- 8.
Heywood (2002, p. 10).
- 9.
Jefferson (1829, p. 66).
- 10.
Montesquieu expressed the same idea in The Spirit of the Laws (1789): “If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection … It is, therefore, very probable that mankind would have been, at length, obliged to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical, government. I mean a confederate republic. This form of government is a convention by which several petty states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to establish. It is a kind of assemblage of societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by means of further associations, till they arrive at such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the whole body”. – Charles-Louis de Secondat (1900, p. 126).
- 11.
Galligan and Walsh (1992, p. 195).
- 12.
Kelsen (1945, p. 313).
- 13.
Gibbs (1991, p. 326).
- 14.
Menzies (1967, p. 24).
- 15.
Madison (1961, p. 323).
- 16.
Hallowell (2007, p. 100).
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid., pp. 99–100.
- 19.
Barnett (1998, p. 2).
- 20.
Hallowell (2007, p. 102).
- 21.
Plato (1945, p. 289).
- 22.
Hitchens (2003, p. 23).
- 23.
Gray (1990, p. xiii).
- 24.
Ibid., p. xii.
- 25.
Ibid., p. xiv.
- 26.
de Jouvenel (1990, p. 76).
- 27.
Ibid., p. 72.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 77.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 73.
- 30.
Palmer (2012a, p. 45).
- 31.
Palmer (2012b, p. 8). Moreover, as Palmer also points out, “immigrants are systematically demonized as “here to get our welfare benefits”. Rather than welcoming people to come and produce wealth, subjects of welfare states act to protect “their welfare benefits” by excluding would-be immigrants and demonizing them that then as locusts and looters. Meanwhile, political elites loudly proclaim that they are helping poor people abroad by using money taken from taxpayers to fund a parasitic international “aid industry”, dumping huge quantities of the agricultural surpluses that have been generated by welfare state politics (to subsidize farmers by guaranteeing floor prices for their products), and handing over loot to autocratic governments: in short, by internationalizing the welfare state”. – Ibid., p. 8.
- 32.
Pearcey (2004, p. 61). A similar point is made by Wilhelm von Humboldt in The Limits of State Action (1792): “The evil results of a too extensive solicitude on the part of the State, are still more strikingly shown in the suppression of all active energy, and the necessary deterioration of the moral character. This scarcely needs further argument. The man who is often led, easily becomes disposed willingly to sacrifice what remains of his capacity for spontaneous action. He fancies himself released from an anxiety which he sees transferred to other hands, and seems to himself to do enough when he looks to their leadership and follows it. Thus, his notions of merit and guilt become unsettled. The idea of the first no longer inspires him; and the painful consciousness of the last assails him less frequently and forcibly, since he can more easily ascribe his shortcomings to this particular position, and leave them to the responsibility of those who have made it what it is. If we add to this, that he may not, possibly, regard the designs of the State as perfectly pure in their objects or execution – that he may suspect that his own advantage only, but along with it some other additional purpose is intended, then, not only the force and energy, but also the purity of his moral nature suffers. He now conceives himself not only completely free from any duty which the State has not expressly imposed upon him, but exonerated at the same time from every personal effort to improve his own condition; and, even fears such an effort, as if it were likely to open out new opportunities, of which the State might take advantage. And as for the laws actually enjoined, he tries as much as possible to escape their operation, considering every such evasion as a positive gain. If we reflect that, among a large part of the nation, its laws and political institutions have the effect of limiting the sphere of morality, it is a melancholy spectacle to see the most sacred duties, and mere trivial and arbitrary enactments, often proclaimed from the same authoritative source, and to see the infraction of both met with the same measure of punishment. Further, the pernicious influence of such a positive policy is no less evident in the behaviour of the citizens to each other. As each individual abandons himself to the solicitous aid of the State, so, and still more, he abandons to it the fate of his fellow-citizens. This weakens sympathy and renders mutual assistance inactive: or, at least, the reciprocal interchange of services and benefits will be most likely to flourish at its liveliest, where the feeling is most acute that such assistance is the only thing to rely upon; and experience teaches us that oppressed classes of the community which are, as it were, overlooked by the government, are always bound together by the closest ties. But whether the citizen becomes indifferent to this fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family towards the members of this household”. Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action [1792], Chapter III, available at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/humboldt/wilhelm_von/sphere/chapter3.html
- 33.
Acton (1993, pp. 81–82).
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Indeed, surveys carried out in the homeless shelters ran by Doe Fund in the 1990s, has showed that four out of five of their residents were chronic drug users, whose problem was not unaffordable housing but self-destructive behaviour – enabled by a culture that downplayed individual responsibility, self-control, and deferral of gratification necessary for success and self-sufficiency. – Magnet (1993, p. 2).
- 36.
Olasky (2000, p. 11).
- 37.
Olasky, above n.27, p. 13.
- 38.
Santamaria (2006, p. 6).
- 39.
Olasky, above n.27, p. 19.
- 40.
See: Paim (1994).
- 41.
Heitor de Paula (2006).
- 42.
Kuschnir (2005, p. 3).
- 43.
Ibid., p. 2.
- 44.
Ibid., p. 9.
- 45.
Speck and Abramo (2002).
- 46.
The Economist (2006).
- 47.
Fitzpatrick (2006).
- 48.
DaMatta (1987, p. 296).
- 49.
Boxer (1969, p. 319).
- 50.
Ibid., p. 321.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 322.
- 52.
Smith (1967, p. 134).
- 53.
Harris (1972, p. 216).
- 54.
Rodrigues (1967, p. 40).
- 55.
See: Carvalho, The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil, p. 135.
- 56.
Rodrigues, above n 48, p. 41.
- 57.
Nabuco (1977, p. 127).
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Bastos (1870, p. 264).
- 60.
Graham (1968, p. 223).
- 61.
Ibid., p. 216.
- 62.
Silveira da Motta (1869, p. 21).
- 63.
Prillaman (2000, p. 9).
- 64.
Hagopian (2004, p. 102).
- 65.
Fitzpatrick (2005).
- 66.
‘Brazil’, 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, at http://www.heritage.org/index/country/brazil
- 67.
‘Report on Brazil’. Paper presented by the Brazilian branch of Transparency International to the Global Forum II on Fighting Corruption, Hague, May 2001, p. 9.
- 68.
Barnett (1998, p. 220).
- 69.
Whether Brazil has had seven or eight constitutions is still an unresolved issue among Brazilian constitutional lawyers. In 1969, a military junta which replaced President Costa e Silva, an army officer, when he suffered a stroke, issued an amendment that rewrote and re-numbered the whole text of the 1967 Constitution. Because this amendment resulted in an entirely new document, many have therefore concluded that it ended up creating a new constitution for Brazil.
- 70.
See Zimmermann (2010).
- 71.
Organization of American States (OAS) (2000).
- 72.
‘State of the World’s Cities: Trends in Latin America & the Carribean – 2004’, UN-Habitat, at: http://www.unhabitat.org/mediacentre/documents/sowc/RegionalLAC.pdf
- 73.
Unger (2004, p. 30).
- 74.
Hite and Morlino (2004, p. 59).
- 75.
By ‘counter-violence’ I mean things such as lynchings and vigilante justice.
- 76.
Prillaman, above n. 64, p. 95.
- 77.
See: Zimmermann (2008, pp. 196–198).
- 78.
Zimmermann (2005, pp. 199–215).
- 79.
Page (1995, p. 22).
- 80.
As example of trivial detail, Article 242 declares that a certain public school in Rio de Janeiro must be owned by the federal government.
- 81.
Rosenn (1990, p. 36).
- 82.
Prado (1994, p. 35).
- 83.
Sartori (1997, p. 200).
- 84.
Prado, above n.83, p. 62.
- 85.
See: Zimmermann (2007).
- 86.
Page, above n.80, p. 22.
- 87.
Braz. Const., Art.6.
- 88.
Braz. Const., Art.7, and Braz. Const., Art.9.
- 89.
Braz. Const., Art.225.
- 90.
Braz. Const., Art.225.
- 91.
Braz. Const., Art.215.
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Zimmermann, A. (2014). Subsidiarity, Democracy and Individual Liberty in Brazil. 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_6
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