Dudley, Leonard --- "Language as Platform: A Theory of Subsidiarity and the Nation State" [2007] ELECD 223; in Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel (eds), "Democracy, Freedom and Coercion" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Democracy, Freedom and Coercion

Editor(s): Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201263

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Language as Platform: A Theory of Subsidiarity and the Nation State

Author(s): Dudley, Leonard

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

7. Language as platform: a theory
of subsidiarity and the nation state
Leonard Dudley

La langue est le signe principal d'une nationalité.
Michelet (1875: 1)



INTRODUCTION

Consider the following political statement. A top international bureau-
crat insists that because of scale economies, the supranational level of
government is the one most appropriate for dealing with major social
problems.

The organization that I represent] intervenes directly on behalf of the poor, by
setting on foot and maintaining many associations which it knows to be efficient
for the relief of poverty.

At the same time, he criticizes national governments for appropriating
powers best left to subordinate organizations.

The foremost duty of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws
and institutions . . . shall be such as themselves to realize public well-being and
private prosperity.1 . . . The law must not undertake more, nor proceed further,
than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief.2

It has been suggested that the latter quotation is one of the first explicit
statements of the concept of subsidiarity, the principle that government
functions should be assigned to the lowest possible level (Feketekuty, 2004).
However, the person in question is neither the secretary-general of the
United Nations nor the head of the European Commission. Rather, it is
Pope Leo XII in his 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum, using the criteria of
scale economies and subsidiarity to justify a pyramid or power in which the
Catholic ...