ABSTRACT
The only field of voluntary activity where the principle of subsidiarity could be argued to have decisively influenced policy towards the voluntary sector in the UK is in primary and secondary education, as realized in the ‘dual system’. This was the accommodation between the central state, local state and Catholic and Anglican churches in place from the late nineteenth century until the education reforms of the late 1980s. However, even here, the notion of subsidiarity seems to have been implicit rather than explicit, and there are good reasons more generally to doubt the accuracy of portraying relations here as ‘corporatist’ (see Kendall and Knapp, 1996: Chapter 7, for a discussion).
