…all the while ensuring the common good of all (which, as a reminder, means to ensure the good of everyone without exception, not to try to secure the greatest good for the greatest number of people).
The principle of subsidiarity builds on those foundations and then goes on to specify that government, the social body which exists in order to secure the common good, should not take away “what individuals can accomplish by their own initiative and efforts.”
[I]t is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. (Quadrag-
In other words, the higher levels of government ought not to interfere in areas where smaller and more local organizations (subsidiaries) are better suited to take charge.
It is not to say that government is unsuited to the task of helping to create the conditions of a just society or that a centralized government is unnecessary. On the contrary, states are important and it is the role of human governments to help foster a society where individuals and families can flourish. After all, individuals and families precede the state—all institutions in a society exist in order to serve the needs of those within it.
In 1931, during upheavals in Europe and the Great Depression in the U.S., Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical in which the principle of subsidiarity was first made explicit, as a response to two alarming developments:
1) an increasingly centralized form of government within communist systems where the State took precedence while individuals and associations were denied any role in national decision-making (not to mention private property rights)
2) the emergence of an extreme version of economic individualism within capitalist societies which a hands-off attitude in the market were directly harmful to the working poor.
Subsidiarity then, is critical of any socio-economic system which deprives individuals of their rights of association and their autonomy in decision making in matters which pertain to their own lives. Subsidiarity also means that when a smaller or local agent or agency is unable—or unwilling—to perform the function for which it exists, then a higher level one must do so. This was the case, for example, when certain U.S. states refused to implement anti-segregation laws and the federal government was compelled to step in.
The development of these social relationships, therefore, can and ought to be realized in a way best calculated to promote its inherent advantages and to preclude, or at least diminish, its attendant disadvantages. (Mater et Magistra, 64)
The principle of subsidiarity says that, when possible, the organi- zations and individuals closest to the situation ought to be permitted to exercise their own freedom and initiative in leading and developing responses. The role of central government continues to be to secure the common good, whatever form that might take in any given situa- tion.
A simple principle to define, perhaps, though difficult to apply at times.
