Remarks delivered at a lunchtime event on inclusive peacebuilding organised by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, UK branch, at the Palace of Westminster 2 April, 2019 – and also on the CPA-UK’s website
Inclusive Peacebuilding
Conflict is not in itself bad. Indeed, without conflict – differences of vision, perspective and interest, and the competition over ideas– it’s hard to see how we could make much progress in human society. What’s bad however, is when conflict is unmanaged and unresolved, and becomes violent.
Levels of violence are on the rise, as shown by news headlines and the recent and current experiences of far too many children, women and men around the world. The annual Global Peace Index score has consistently got worse from year to year in the past decade. So we clearly need more inclusive peacebuilding.
Peacebuilding is the collective term for the many different ways in which people and institutions try to achieve two goals. First, prevent, minimise or stop the violence. If successful, this may create what’s sometimes known as a ‘negative peace’ – i.e. where people aren’t harming one another, but the conflicts – or at least their underlying causes – remain unresolved, with a risk of further frustration and violence in the future.
The second goal of peacebuilding is therefore ‘positive peace’ – the ability of societies to anticipate, manage and resolve conflicts, based on the availability of functional, open and trusting relationships between people and peoples, and between citizens and the institutions and people with power to make decisions that affect them. These are sometimes known as horizontal and vertical relationships, respectively. When these relationships work well, they are both the cause and the result of people’s fair access to a series of essential public goods: decision making and accountability processes, economic opportunity, education and health and other services, justice, and security. An inclusive peace is one in which people – and recognisable groups in society – feel they have fair access to those things, and are therefore included, not excluded. Being included, they have opportunities, not grievances. And inclusive peacebuilding refers to peacebuilding processes that enable fair outcomes, through processes that are in themselves as inclusive as possible, given the circumstances – i.e. they too are fair.
Why this matters to the Commonwealth
There are several reasons why this matters to the people and institutions of the Commonwealth. First, it should matter to us all morally, that people are suffering from violence. That is one reason why the Sustainable Development Goals include a global commitment to building peace. Peace is also part of the raison d’être of the Commonwealth, mentioned almost at the top of the Charter, which in its second line refers to the problems created by living through ‘an era of …. unprecedented threats to peace and security’. The Commonwealth commissioned Amartya Sen to write Peace and Democratic Society in 2011, drawing on Civil Paths to Peace, a core Commonwealth text.
Some Commonwealth countries are clearly affected by active or unresolved conflicts: Bangladesh, Cameroon, Cyprus, Fiji, India, Kenya Pakistan, Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Uganda come most readily to mind. But others are situated in so-called ‘bad neighbourhoods’ – places where conflicts can spill readily over the border from non-Commonwealth countries. Others are affected by chronic gang violence linked to crime and politics. Others, still, are affected by the nasty strain of populism currently spreading across the world, including in some of the apparently more ‘advanced’ democracies, and by the threat of various forms of violence linked to extreme politics, including terrorism. What happened in New Zealand recently was enough to remind us that nowhere is really safe from conflict. And many Commonwealth countries are also threatened by Islamic extremist terror.
Everyone is a potential peacebuilder
Relatively few people and institutions see themselves as ‘peacebuilders’. Certainly far too few to resolve all the world’s conflicts, if we were to rely only on them. Fortunately, however, all of us can contribute to peace. Many of us already are, even if we don’t quite see it like that. That’s because anyone who has an impact on the nature of the public goods referred to earlier, has the capacity to make them either fairer, or less fair, i.e. better or worse, for peace: economic opportunities, decision-making and accountability processes, education, health and other services, justice, and security…
What this means is that all political and technical actors and agencies working on such issues – whether their role is primarily a political or technical one – need to set peacebuilding goals, alongside their other goals. They need to ask themselves: how can we implement our role, in a way that makes peace stronger and more durable?
Economics and peace
Let’s take a look at the question of economic access, for example. The European Union is widely recognised as a peacebuilding project – on a vast scale. And yet its origins were in the (comparatively) humble Iron and Coal Communities, established by leaders who sought to combine key economic sectors in France and Germany, and thus neutralise the apparent interest of either, in going to war with the other. Whether that makes it an economic project with a peacebuilding goal, or a peacebuilding project with economic goals, partly depends on your politics, and may not matter. In either case, it’s classic example of how economic policy decisions can be harnessed to peacebuilding goals. Other intergovernmental economic blocs can do the same: look at their neighbourhood, identify the risks of violent conflict, and work out economic policies to reduce them, and include these in regional agreements and ways of working together. Even if this means foregoing some economic benefit in the short term. I think all Commonwealth countries are members of one or more such regional blocs.
Governments can and should of course do the same within their own borders, for example setting stability and peace goals, and using these, alongside GDP, defence, poverty eradication, etc., to define and gauge the effectiveness of their policies and programmes. Kenya, to take an example, can consider economic policies that enable better job creation in communities vulnerable to the blandishments of Al Shabab’s recruiters, so that young people are less likely to be attracted to violence. Banking policy can insist – as the government has done in Peru – that all major bank / investment loans are based not just on a financial case and an environmental impact assessment, but also on a social assessment, asking whether the project will be good for social cohesion, or divisive, and refusing the invest in the latter. Governments help set the tone for societal discourse, so they also need to be publicly explicit about their peace and stability goals, in explaining the decisions they make, so citizens understand why – for example – public funds have been applied to what might seem ‘uneconomic’ investments. President Nyerere of Tanzania perhaps set us a good example when he focused his presidency on creating a stable, unified Tanzania out of many tribes and lanscapes, rather than going for the fastest economic growth.
Businesses are of course very important economic players, and they can contribute hugely to inclusive peace if they set their minds to it. Like governments, businesses should set peacebuilding goals, alongside their production and financial goals, and these need to be tailored to the needs and opportunities specific to their business and context. In a divided, multi-ethnic context, they might set out to employ people from both ethnic groups, and foster workplace harmony that employees can take home with them, as some companies have done. They might also look at their supply chain and make sure that they purchase as much local content as possible, and ensure their procurement is done fairly, to maximise their contribution to local stability. They might take extra steps to follow the letter of the law when it comes to gaining access to land or other resources, even when local practices might encourage cutting corners, as this might help reinforce good governance practices….
And of course donors and other international organisations, which can have an influential role in fragile contexts, need to make sure that their economic projects and initiatives are conflict-sensitive, contributing to both peace and economic growth. If large numbers of jobs are needed, to maintain the peace, then donors may need to drop the orthodoxy of recent times, in which ‘the private sector must provide’, and go back to a simpler model whereby external transfers are used to subsidise labour intensive public infrastructure for perhaps 2-3 generations, while the economy reaches the capacity needed to provide enough jobs and business opportunities.
Something for us all
These are just a few examples, and all peacebuilding has to be context-defined, first and foremost: there are few prescriptions. The key take away, I think, is that inclusive peacebuilding should not be left to the self-avowed peacebuilders. It’s something for us all, and that includes business people and others with an economic sector role.
Hostage
I practise holding still as settled sand,
although my heartbeat’s caving in so fast
I barely hear the voice, nor feel the hand
directing me to lift the blindfold and
advance towards the knot of waiting cars.
I practise mentally how I will kneel
and face the world – face you – with dignity;
imagine how the slicing blade will feel…
if I’ll succumb to crumbling consciousness,
to crippling fear, or simple agony?
I practise holding both hands in the air
and calling out my name when armed men storm
the door, obeying their commands as glare
from sudden sunlight slants through dust and din,
and certain hands propel me from the room.
I practise holding out my arms to you
as wide as any tranquil summer sea,
when ransom or rescue returns me to
the shore my trespasses had wrenched me from,
and picture you forgiving me.
But mostly I rehearse the smallest moments:
Sunday walks, the pier, the tree we climbed;
the neighbours’ girl; the wheeling starlings – omens,
surely, even then, I’d disenchant
our world and discombine the layers of time.
The cliffs, the wheeling starlings: omens, yes.
But what I did to her – to you – I did.
You know my darkness now: only my death
could free you to remember me again,
but will not free you – free her – to forgive.
Published in Earlyworks 2018 anthology
Interpreting
We had little to do at first
except avoiding one another’s eye
with manufactured hurt –
as one of the Russians (quietly) remarked:
translating stony silences
is harder than you’d think.
When Khrushchev demanded Ike apologise
for what was practically an act of war
Ike made like nothing had been said –
though we’d all heard it had,
and I’d repeated it
so I was sure.
But Khrushchev wouldn’t let it go:
it was yet more proof he couldn’t trust the West,
so what was the point of this?
Then Ike said we’d had no choice
because we can’t trust you –
and so the summit went:
an injured silence interspersed with versions of
it’s all your fault,
until the Soviets said that’s that and quit the room
and Paris, too.
I heard all both sides said out loud –
said half of it myself, in fact –
but cannot say if either asked himself
how his opponent felt, nor how
to help him help make this all right.
Published in a Hedgehog Press Stickleback edition
Percentages
At first, they glanced, and glanced again, before
each knew the way to ask, and to respond;
and as their confidences grew, each saw
the other’s gap of love, and far beyond,
and learned, like breathing out and in, to sense
and meet the other’s needs; and thus their own.
But now, in relearned doubt and coy pretence
a new-found germ of awkwardness has grown.
Back then, it was enough to hint desire
for her (or him), to know, nine times in ten,
that she (or he) would correspond in kind.
Today, as each more rarely feels inspired
the odds are merely vanishing, that when
one sings of love, the other’s lines will rhyme.
Published in a Hedgehog Press Stickleback edition
Fair enough?
Inclusive peace processes are all the rage, but is fairness a better metric than inclusiveness? Yes, because it reflects people’s own metric of improvement, and their own agency.
One of the currently in-vogue concepts in peacebuilding is ‘inclusion’. This is not without controversy: there’s a wide spectrum of opinions about how inclusive peace processes ought to be, with some arguing that short-term stability means focusing on an exclusive deal or settlement; while others maintain it’s important to broaden the number of voices and perspectives at the table right from the start – even if that means risking short-term stability. Like many, I fall somewhere in between, and would argue for a pragmatic approach that nevertheless seeks to encourage and promote diverse engagement from as early as possible, without losing sight of the short-term stability goal. This means seeking opportunities for wider inclusion in local, or perhaps thematic parts of the peace process, if it’s too risky to do so in more central parts of the process.
In any case, ‘inclusion’ needs to be considered not only in terms of ‘peace processes’, but also – and equally or even more importantly – in the outcomes. Hence, as long as – say – a constitutional assembly clearly legislates for universal adult suffrage, it may not matter so much if the assembly itself wasn’t fully representative of society. Ideally, of course, one seeks both inclusive processes and outcomes, and – other things being equal – the former will usually make the latter more likely anyway.
But, in messy and risky circumstances, how do we judge when ‘enough’ inclusion has been achieved? Numbers are one way to do this: assessing the proportion of women, men, young people, members of particular castes or ethnicities, people from different religions or regions, or sexual identities in political and administrative roles, in jobs, obtaining justice, attending school and accessing health care, able to vote, and so on.
But numbers can mask underlying truths: for example the number of men and women have for several years been at parity in Rwanda’s parliament; but that doesn’t necessarily indicate that either wield a great deal of power in the political scheme of things there. And reports from Nepal are that despite places being reserved for women, including low caste women, in national government and local village councils, these tend to be determined by male party leaders who allocate them to women of their choice.
The more I consider questions of inclusion, the more often I find myself coming back to the deeper, more important question of fairness. Although it’s not an absolute concept and therefore may be harder to measure than numerical inclusion, it seems to me that it’s the right chalk to use, on this issue. I can think of at least four reasons for that.
First, fairness is a core issue in peace and conflict. While equality may be the holy grail of peacebuilding, I think fairness matters more. Societies less susceptible to fight are those in which access to livelihoods, justice, services, opportunities for advancement, and political voice is fairly available across different segments of society. And by the same token, it’s notions of unfairness which all too often drive people to undermine stability and take up arms. Surely, as a new status quo evolves in Syria, and the war comes to an end, most Syrians will judge the outcome not only by the degree of security it entails, but by how fair their own situation is, and whether they had a fair role in defining it?
Second, while inclusion is an abstract notion emerging from academia and top-down agendas, fairness is something that everyone understands, and it’s commonly one of the criteria we all use to judge the situation we find ourselves in – whether in relation to a seat on the bus, access to housing, water or farmland, or a myriad of other goods. Every child grows up with a sense of what’s fair and unfair. It’s a familiar metric.
Third, fairness is – almost by definition – a comparative concept, rather than a binary one. Most people, I would contend, see fairness as something they have ‘enough’ or ‘not enough’ of, in relation to the issue at hand. This means that one can engage in a discussion about making things ‘fairer’, and thus reducing friction and restoring stability. This means it is eminently suitable for finding compromise: if I am angry at not having enough access to river water to irrigate my farm, it is possible to seek a solution in which I have a bit more water – or find some other way of improving my livelihood, to make my situation fairer, vis-à-vis that of others.
Fourth, fairness is unpatronizing. It’s harder to treat people as objects through the fairness lens, than through the inclusion lens. Inclusion is a passive idea: people can be included, whereas fairness is something they can achieve themselves. Fairness not only meets grievance holders on their own terms, but it also ensures that any conversation about their situation is meaningfully political. Why? Because any discussion of fairness requires a discussion of the resources available, and the trade-offs required if any adjustment is to be made to give one group or another, a fairer crack of the whip. Making sure the conversation is explicitly political in this way reflects the agency of all concerned.
An obvious problem with this approach is the slipperiness and subjectivity of fairness. But that too is an advantage, really, as it means it’s essential to engage with the stakeholders concerned – those who might gain, and those who might lose out, in any proposed change of circumstances – to understand how fair they think it is.
The unhidden thread
Grey sunlight glances off wet tarmac, boats
and barges surf and plough the wind and tide.
Planes fly above the cloud; from suburb, coast
and weald, the trains and buses flow in lines,
converge, and spill their riders who divide
and follow bridges, belts and stairways spread
about the city, movements synchronised –
all held in balance by a hidden thread.
I shiver from the beauty of this web,
and cower to foresense its fragile silk cut through –
in every instant see the river surge
with the pace and power of an untamed thoroughbred,
and render towers, gates and gold – and you –
grey-sunlit marshland overflown by birds.
Published in Earlyworks 2018 Anthology
Deceit
What if in fact Potemkin built real towns,
but sailed his empress Catherine instead
past those facades for which he's more renowned,
erected proud along the river’s edge,
and wooed her thus not as befits a queen
but any girl he wanted to impress
with picnics where the Dnieper laps pristine
flood meadows with intent and tenderness,
and beached their boat beneath cascading willows,
served her champagne, caviar and dates,
and lay, caressed by wavelets in the shallows
with her, far removed from cares of state?
For any mighty fool can relocate
a bunch of scurvy settlers from the east –
it takes a rarer talent to create
the perfect backdrop for a royal tryst.
The beauty of Potemkin villages
is you can visit when – with whom – you wish,
and no one’s lurking in the shadows as
a prince and empress steal a real kiss.
First published in This Quieter Shore, a Stickleback micro-collection, 2018
Shiva
Rice crowded terraced heights above
in vivid stripes
as though the world had not
for a long moment paused
while a harsh and violent wind seared the slopes,
and the city they’d for years
led down towards
had not
in that long moment gone
though when you drop a bomb
however powerful
some features randomly remain intact
or recognisable, at least
a chimney stack
a temple arch, a river course, a grid
of curiously uncluttered streets
a simple shed
a jagged obelisk of stones –
the relic corner of a vanished home
in a vanished neighbourhood
I heard you say
your sister’s blood would not stop flowing in
the hot summer sun;
she could not swallow
to replace the blood she lost she was
a child – and so
were you –
it feels like yesterday.
Published in Earlyworks 2018 Anthology
Subsidiarity: le mot du jour for 2019?
Subsidiarity is an obscure sounding word, but a simple, intuitive idea with huge resonance for the challenges we face.
Fancy labels obscure simple, intuitive ideas
Sometimes the simplicity of an idea is belied by the complexity of its name. Dialectical Materialism is just a fancy way to say that the interaction between competing economic interests changes societies; Wicked Problems are simply problems so complex we can’t fully grasp them; and Negative Capability simply means that good art does not have to strive for certainty. Ideas removed of their jargon carapace are not just simpler than they sound, they often seem intuitively to be right.
Such is the case for ‘subsidiarity’ – the impenetrably named, yet simple and intuitive idea that decisions should be taken, and tasks undertaken, at the lowest appropriate level, in political systems and large or complex organisations. Over the years, I’ve heard this principle proposed as part of the solution to many diverse challenges, including how to improve harmony across the European Union (EU), how to improve the performance of both a vast global corporation and a relatively small international charity; and I proposed it myself many years ago as part of the discussion about how to improve the international development agenda.
Despite its off-putting name, the subsidiarity principle offers clues to solutions for some of the challenges we currently face, making subsidiarity a strong candidate for political word of the year in 2019 and beyond. Climate change, poverty eradication, holding China together, finding a way forward on migration, addressing the abuse of vulnerable people in the Roman Catholic Church, and softening the harsh politics that have arisen in far too many countries of late: these and countless other challenges can be better understood and better met, if seen through a subsidiarity lens.
Delegating upwards
Subsidiarity is the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot or should not be performed more locally. Often confused with decentralization, which is about delegation from the centre, subsidiary can perhaps be better understood as delegation towards the centre. In other words, the central or higher levels of complex organisations are subsidiary to lower levels or peripheries. Subsidiarity is therefore integral to federal states, in which, for example, the federal government leads on foreign and defence policy, and on setting fundamental social norms (citizenship, basic rights and protections, currency, etc.) while states and other entities have primacy over local economic policy.
While it is no doubt a much older idea, the word itself was coined (probably in German as Subsidiarität) in the late Nineteenth Century by Roman Catholic thinkers in respect of Social Thought. In the words of Pope Pius XI, some four decades later:
“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it 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. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.” (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, May 15, 1931,)
Subsidiarity has long been a niche idea, well known mainly to political scientists and the like. But it came to more popular attention in Europe when the EU Maastricht Treaty was being negotiated – and then sold to sometimes sceptical voters – in the early 1990s. The Treaty – then an important step in turning the EU from a primarily economic into a more political union – adopts subsidiarity as a principle of European law, under which the EU’s central institutions may only act where the action of individual countries is insufficient.
The beauty of subsidiarity – when it works – is that it implies and integrates:
- Trust in diverse, local solutions to locally experienced challenges
- The importance of maintaining and trusting a higher level set of norms, rules and functions which both empower and – where necessary – constrain local actions and solutions
- The need and utility for issues to be addressed at a higher level or by a more central authority, when they are too large or complex for local solutions alone to suffice.
As such it is indeed a seductive and intuitive concept which when successfully applied, privileges efficiency, effectiveness, fairness and resilience, and nourishes both the individual and the wider society.
Applying subsidiarity to the challenges of today, and the challenges of tomorrow, today
It’s beyond the scope of this short article to explain in detail the mechanisms through which subsidiarity might help us discover solutions to our challenges as a society in 2019. But we can at least explore why it is relevant to a few examples.
Man-made climate change seems an obvious place to begin, since it is an issue which affects the whole world, but does so locally (i.e. where environmental changes impact on local lives), as a result of emissions which are often created in other localities far away. It also encapsulates the importance of intergenerational fairness: the need to heed the voices of the as-yet unborn. Mitigation measures – to reduce carbon and other warming emissions – need to be developed locally, but in a context of global rules. This is the only way to avoid a so-called tragedy of the commons, in which certain interests continue to benefit from polluting while others show restraint, and the global problem remains unresolved. Adaptation to environmental changes meanwhile must be locally designed, so that it takes account of diverse local realities, interests and needs, but within national policies which incorporate fairness and environmental and social sustainability. These policies in their turn need to reflect international agreements which translate fairness into a reasonable, practicable framework of financial transfers from wealthy, historically high-emitting countries, to poorer, lower-carbon economies.
Global poverty eradication took an important step forward with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. These outline the main fields of endeavour through which poverty can be reduced, so that poorer countries and communities gain improved access to voice, opportunity, services and sustained, sustainable progress. The SDGs represent the first time that we have achieved global agreement on what matters most for humanity, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. But this high level agreement means little unless translated into actions at multiple levels: legislation by national parliaments, actions by national executives, businesses and civil society, and supportive frameworks put in place by international bodies, international donors and philanthropists. These cannot all be coordinated from ‘the centre’ – in any case there is no ‘centre’ from which to do so in this vast and messy world. So what’s needed is continued and increased local and national energy, where necessary delegating upwards with requested for supportive actions and frameworks – rather than a delegation downwards of the targets included in the SDGs, as some see it. In this context, the global framework, in the hand of the UN, remains a tool through which to measure and publicise the progress being made in different countries, and thus enable decision-makers to be held to account for their contribution.
Migration offers another interesting example of international action, in the recently agreed, and somewhat controversial Global Compact for Migration. This vast and sprawling document, agreed in Morocco last month, was the result of many months of international negotiation, facilitated by the UN and the International Organisation for Migration (IoM), in response to a sense of impotence and frustration felt by the citizens and governments of wealthy destination countries and poorer ‘sending’ countries alike. In a sense, through their frustration and recognition that no single state could fully address the issue, they ‘delegated upwards’ the task of articulating a new framework for migration. Despite the fact that some countries quit the process because they claimed it undermined state sovereignty, the Compact is in fact a fairly toothless declaration. But it sets out the principles of a global approach to migration that is fair to all: that respects the anxieties of citizens in destination countries and the aspirations of potential migrants, and treats everyone with dignity and protects vulnerable people. The next stage is to put this new Compact into action. But ‘implementing the Compact’ is probably an oxymoron, as it is not a plan, merely a framework. Nevertheless, it contains principles as well as practical suggestions for how communities, governments and international organisations can now proceed, and over time it is hoped that its guidelines will begin to shape doctrines and underpin a new set of accepted practices, much as the 1951 Refugee Convention did many years ago.
For the Chinese Communist Party success is ultimately defined in terms of maintaining its hold on power, as it believes that is the only way to achieve stability in such a vast and complex country, at least for now. One way it has done so, has been through the phenomenal leap forward of the past forty years. This has allowed hundreds of millions of citizens to emerge out of poverty, and has transformed China’s international status. But this has been at huge environmental and social cost. China has already begun the task of reversing the environmental degradation, not least as a way to reduce social discontent due to pollution and poor living conditions. But it still faces a herculean challenge keeping the country together, as demographic change, improved education and access to heterodox ideas threaten the social and economic models that have worked so far, and threaten to undermine citizens’ confidence in a governance over which they have limited influence. The scandalous mistreatment of millions of Muslim Uighurs in north-western China is but the latest high profile example of how the state is willing to trample over local and individual rights and preferences, for the greater good of the nation as defined by the state. Sooner or later, this will surely become unsustainable, and it is hard to seen any sustainable solution which does not move towards the principle of subsidiarity, and an environment of increased trust. A governance imbued with subsidiarity is by nature resilient, able to absorb pressures and tensions, and bounce back. Governance without subsidiarity, by contrast, is brittle, fragile, and liable to self-destruct.
Applying subsidiary to the Roman Catholic Church – the institution whence it emerged – is also instructive. The Church is reeling from the consequences of its failure to prevent and hold people accountable for the abuse of vulnerable people, often children, by priests and other office holders across the world. For years, it resisted internal and external pressure to change. More recently, the current Pope has made it clear that this must change. This problem demands a response that reflects subsidiarity. The Church leadership needs to set out in clear, unambiguous detail, the need for all its agents around the world to prevent further abuse as an absolute priority, and to collaborate humbly and completely with national law enforcement agencies, so that all people suspected of abuse are investigated without bias or prejudice, and held to account under the law if found guilty. To this end, it needs also to make available the necessary support and tools to its provinces around the world, reward church leaders who do the right thing, and sanction those who do not. Local action, supported by a global framework of norms and guidance: subsidiarity.
And finally – since I am writing this in Brexit Britain – to the question of how to respond to pernicious, populist politics. The EU project provides a neat scapegoat for the anxieties and concerns of many European citizens, for their own and their children’s futures. Brexit is a textbook example. Personally, I voted for the UK to remain in the EU. But that doesn’t mean I think the Brexiteers don’t have a point. Brexit – along with other currents of nationalism, nativism and populism being whipped up by often shrewd political entrepreneurs like Steve Bannon – does genuinely illustrate the need for our governance arrangements to be reviewed using a subsidiarity lens. During my lifetime, governments in Western Europe, as elsewhere, have signed up to an increasing number of international frameworks which constrain their ability to act politically at home. Mostly, these have been a good thing, whether taken individually or as a whole. Nevertheless, little by little, power and authority have seeped from where they once lay, to places further away, where citizen-voters can no longer see nor smell them. The cumulative effect over time has been to undermine subsidiarity: the combination of mutual trust in diverse, local solutions to locally experienced challenges, a higher level set of norms and functions which both empower and – where necessary – constrain local actions and solutions, and need for some issues to be addressed at a higher level or by a more central authority, when they are too large or complex for local solutions alone to suffice. Somehow or other, across the USA, Europe, Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere, there’s a need to take another look at how to re-energise the social contract through a rebalancing of the subsidiarity web, ensuring that political acts are effected no further away from where citizens live and experience them, than they ought to be.
But it’s no panacea
In these examples I’ve tried to show why subsidiarity matters – perhaps more than ever – today. I don’t mean to imply any of this is easy. After all, subsidiarity has long been used by people on both the left and the right to justify their particular points of view. For libertarians and Tea Party activists, subsidiarity means limiting the power of government; for some on the Left, it means preventing local decision-making with which they might disagree. Pope Pius XI’s words quoted earlier should be understood in part as the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to find a kind of third way, in response to the conflict stirred up by the powerful and various torrents of Nazism, Fascism, Communism, Liberalism and Capitalism meeting each other head-on in an already unstable political environment.
Applying a subsidiarity lens does not automatically provide a solution. What it does provide, however, is a lens through which to analyse the challenges we face, and a framework within which to discuss which kinds of actions and decision are needed, and will continue to be needed in the future. This, I hope, can help us develop or reinforce locally empowering competency and capability, within clearly articulated and enforced norms and protections for current and future generations.
Thank you
Choosing a pair of opera stars to play
the leading roles might not, at first, seem hard:
the melodrama of our wedding day,
warm nights in Africa, the fights, the bars…
But far too few, I fear, would have the art
they’d need to find your sudden sotto moods;
or my comodo as the chorus parts
indifferently, then heals as I pass through;
how we each guard and ration all that’s true
within, and – piano – hear in private space
the solo arias of lives and lands
we neither leave behind, nor know; how you’ve
delivered me respite from loneliness,
and let me be a loved and lonely man.
Published in a Hedgehog Press Stickleback edition
Phil Vernon 