Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is a principle of social and political organization (especially in Catholic social teaching, European Union law, and some conservative/federalist thought) that holds:

“A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.”

(Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931; also Article 5 of the EU Treaty)

Key features:

• Decisions should be made at the lowest level competent to handle them effectively.
• Higher levels (region, nation, EU, etc.) only intervene when lower levels cannot adequately achieve the goal.
• Explicitly hierarchical: it assumes multiple legitimate layers of authority (family → municipality → province → nation → supranational), but with a strong presumption in favor of the lower layers.
• Pragmatic and outcome-oriented: the test is competence and the common good, not ideological smallness.
• Widely used in Christian Democracy, conservative thought (Edmund Burke, Johannes Althusius), and the legal structure of the European Union.

Example: A national government should not run local schools if municipalities can do it well, but it may set national curriculum standards or fund poorer districts if local governments lack resources.

Subsidiarity vs multi-scale competency level

Open Subsidiarity vs multi-scale competency level

See also

Triarchy, Hierarchy, Heterarchy, Multi-level competency level, Governance