[EM] Geographical districts

[James Gilmour]

> From: Raph Frank > Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 12:17 AM
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 11:34 PM, James Gilmour 
> <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > It is not (or should not be) a question of whether or not there is a 
> > consensus at any particular geographical level of community. The 
> > defining factors for "the geographical community" should be the level 
> > at which the electors can engage with the particular issue and the 
> > level at which something can actually be done.  In all cases the 
> > objective should be to ensure that the various "assemblies" elected to 
> > deal with the issues are properly representative of those they are 
> > elected to serve.  For city-wide issues, the "geographical community" 
> > is the whole city.  For issues affecting only my local school, the 
> > "geographical community" is the area of the city served by that school  
> > -  but if there are no fixed geographies associated with the various 
> > schools in the city, the appropriate community for the school board is 
> > the families whose children attend the local school.

> This is called subsidiarity.  It is (in theory) the guiding 
> principle when deciding if the EU as a whole or the 
> individual members should handle an issue.

With all due respect, what I was writing about was not subsidiarity.  Nor has subsidiarity (senu stricto) anything to do with the
proposal for how the EU and its Member States should deal with issues, despite the abuse of the term "subsidiarity" in this context.
The EU proposals are all about devolution, i.e. handing down. (Never forget: "Power devolved is power retained.")  Subsidiarity, on
the other hand, is about building decision-making structures from the bottom up, i.e. a lower (smaller, more local) group
voluntarily giving power to a higher (larger, more widespread) group only because the required decision can be made only at that
higher level or because the decision will be better made at that higher level.

One could image (NB imagine) subsidiary operating in the "schools case".  Decisions affecting only our local school should be and
would be made within the school community, perhaps through the mechanism of a school board.  Issues affecting school education
across the whole city can be made only at the whole city level, so they are remitted up to a wider geographical unit. And so on up.
But that is NOT what is actually in operation.  Certain educational requirements are set in state law (Scotland in my case).  The
state (Parliament and Government) has devolved the operational decision-making (and some policy making) to the 32 local authorities
(elected Councils).  Some local authorities have devolved some (minor) aspects of decision-making to individual schools.  So the
existing structure is a top-down one that has come about by a process of enforced centralisation followed by varying degrees of
devolution.  It bears no resemblance to subsidiarity in origin, legal basis or operation.

 
> It is a good idea.  However, who gets to decide what is the 
> correct level.  Often, it is the larger assembly that gets to 
> decide if power should be delegated to a smaller area.

If the larger assembly is deciding if power should be DELEGATED, it is devolution that is in operation, not subsidiarity.


> In the US, the federal government decides to a certain extent 
> what power the States should have.

This is devolution, not subsidiarity.  It may have started out as subsidiarity, i.e. the States agreed to give certain powers to the
federal centre, but that's not how it is today.

James

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