ABSTRACT
To the extent that Americans have any familiarity with the principle of subsidiarity, they tend to regard it as a principle of administrative devolution or “ratchet-down” federalism, which directs placing responsibility at the lowest possible social level. This crabbed and badly distorted understanding overlooks the lion’s share of the principle’s significance. Properly understood, subsidiarity represents an application, or an expression of, the solidarity principle. Although the two principles represent key social, legal, economic, and constitutional—not to mention theological—concepts, neither is well-known or understood in the English-speaking world. Despite the fact that subsidiarity received its best-known formulation in a papal encyclical, the principle does not spring from religious roots, but rather is an expression of practical wisdom. Subsidiarity seeks to adjust the proper relationship between the individual and the communities of which the individual is part. By pursuing the sources and development of the subsidiarity principle, and the understanding of the human that informs it, the chapter seeks to demonstrate its significance to the resolution of pressing contemporary problems.
