Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity: A Time-Honored and Polysemous Principle

Applied to a large number of fields of analysis, the principle of subsidiarity is multifaceted and flexible. Historically, ancient medieval thought did not take into account the aspect of efficient public action presently denoted by this term. The principle of subsidiarity is mentioned in the works of philosophers such as Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The objective of the principle was to determine the link between the community (cities, village, family) and the individual. The central idea was that whenever an individual is capable of meeting one's needs, the community should not interfere. The principle was applied by the Roman Catholic Church in a similar manner in an encyclical of 1931, which defined a doctrine of organizing social relationships.

From these philosophical and religious approaches, the concept of subsidiarity gradually came to be used as a legal and political principle for the distribution of competences between various levels of public action. As it became a legal and political norm, the principle of subsidiarity became a method of governance that was seen as an effective and democratic form of direct government close to citizens. Therefore, the aim of subsidiarity was to determine a fair balance of competences while taking into account the skills and resources of different levels of power. In this way, the principle represents a good and just rule of governance.

The Principle of Subsidiarity: A Method of Governance

The principle of subsidiarity is a method of legitimate recourse to a certain kind of action. Given the fact that subsidiarity is perceived as being not only a principle of organization, but also one of efficiency (subsidiarity management enables better implementation thanks to proximity, competence, and autonomy) as well as a political doctrine, its application varies according to the levels of intervention and the institutional and political configurations of the actors.

The principle is used most often as a standard of legitimacy and thus as an element of what some people call good governance. Under such circumstances, the lack of precision of the concept partly explains the success of the principle. At the present time, the subsidiarity method is observed more and more on the national, community, and even international levels (such as the Rio de Janeiro Declaration on the Environment and Development in 1992).

On the national level, the principle of subsidiarity has served as the basis of the constitutional and legal architecture of both the Federal State of Germany and the Swiss Union, each with a relatively different formal dimension due to their historical and political logics.

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