Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Subsidiarity and The Proper Role of Government

 


Question: Define “subsidiarity” in your own words. How is the concept of subsidiarity as discussed in today’s reading related to “devolution”as described in your textbook? Google “devolution in Kenya” for an ambitious example of how governments might use devolution to achieve a desirable level of subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity, to me, means that local governments play a larger role in the administration and disbursement of services to their community. The local, lower levels of government would be more involved in the policies and procedures of programs and services that are offered to the community. The important thing to remember is that when advocating for the devolution of certain programs and powers, one must be aware of the capacity of each particular level of government. As we know, each community is different and there are specific issues related to their location, demographics, size, funding, etc... making it difficult to promote a cookie cutter solution to each city, county, and state in our country. The best part of the American government is that there is a division between the responsibilities of the Federal and State levels, but sometimes this division can be blurred. For local governments to have more control and power over the way programs and services are to be administered, they have to be able to handle the processes and prove their solutions viable to their particular concerns or difficulties. Subsidiarity is a great way to increase innovation and flexibility when providing services to the population which allows the U.S. to experiment with different policies that can transform government institutions into more effective and economical systems.

Devolution is defined as the delegating of power and programs from the federal to state and local governments. The terms Devolution and Subsidiarity are related because devolution requires the exchange of power from a higher level of government to a lower level which in fact is what subsidiarity means.


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It is interesting to read about Kenya's constitutional devolution process which seeks to build county institutions from scratch and promote development of all areas in Kenya, not just certain jurisdictions and industries. If you want to read about Kenya's devolution process, click the links below!



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