Subsidiarity

Introduction

One of the foundational principles of conservatism is the principle of subsidiarity. Simply put, subsidiarity is the idea that social or political issues should be managed by the most immediate organizational authority that is appropriate. That is, no activity should be delegated to an authority higher than need be. This principle is crucial to the small government ideal that conservatism promotes. Subsidiarity can also be applied to families, charities, and other organizations.

Examples of subsidiarity

Consider the following example. In northern states, snow covers the ground for many months of the year. Northern states get more snow than southern states. The typical response to hazardous snowfall is to lay salt on the roads. Counties often manages this salt distribution. Counties typically have the capacity to manage the salt distribution. Counties are most directly affected and related to the snow-covered roads. So, counties should manage this responsibility. In other words, because the country has the immediate capacity to manage snowfall, it is the correct authority to manage snowfall. It wouldn’t make sense for the federal government to handle snowfall if the county can do so effectively. If there was sudden lack on salt or too much snow, the county could ask for help from the cities, township, or state level for help. This would be the proper application of subsidiarity because the county is no longer able to manage the issue by itself, and so the next, immediate level of authority helps.

Failure of authorities

Let’s illustrate this concept further with a familial example. Hypothetical parents notice their son’s room is messy. They tell their son to clean his room within a reasonable amount of time. The son refuses. The parents may press him to clean his room, but if he continues to refuse, the parents may end up cleaning the room themselves. This is an example of the principle of subsidiarity being executed because the proper authority fails. The house is overseen by the parents, who are responsible for its upkeep. The responsibility for the son’s room is first delegated to the son. He is required to clean his room within a reasonable time frame. Because he failed to do so, the next level of authority, his parents, are responsible for cleaning his room. (Of course, the son ought to have cleaned his room, but that is beside the point).  

An important point to make is that even though the parents ended up cleaning the room, the principle of subsidiarity was still followed. In this example, the son was correctly assigned responsibility over keeping his room clean. The reason the room isn’t clean is because he refused/failed to keep it clean, not because he was incorrectly assigned the responsibility. It would have been better if he had, because this would allow his parents to focus on higher level tasks, like budgeting. So, the system still worked, and subsidiarity was still adhered to because there was a proper, hierarchical assignment of tasks and backups were in place.

The principle of subsidiarity fails when an activity is set up to be done by an authority that is not suited for it. Let’s consider a slightly different version of the salt example. Imagine the federal government is estimating how much money Kalamazoo will need to buy salt for the upcoming winter. It is wholly unnecessary for the federal government to be wasting time on something so nuanced for its scope when the people living and governing within the county can estimate more effectively. The people in Kalamazoo County have direct experience with local winters, are intimately concerned with the local prices of salt, and other relevant variables to their managing of snowfall. The people who live in the county are directly connected to the experience of managing the snowfall. The federal government is not. So, it makes more sense for the county to manage this issue.   

So, it is appropriate (according to the principle of subsidiarity) for a state/federal level government to step in when a problem becomes too large for local authorities to control. For example, if a community has a population of homeless which exceeds the local charities’ capacity to assist, higher level organizations can and should help. The problem comes when responsibility is unnecessarily delegated upwards, like the federal government trying to budget for snowfall at the country level. Overloading higher levels of authority with low-level responsibilities creates an ineffective system which does not function to meet the needs with which it has been entrusted. But often, we see governments trying to take on more and more, making them less and less effective. An example of this is the European Union, which is taking on issues that it should not be involved in. 

In conclusion, the principle of subsidiarity is a crucial principle to understand. Too often, governments, charities, and families are setup in inefficient and counterproductive ways that don’t adhere to the principle of subsidiarity. This leads to not only financial and productivity issues, but broader societal issues.