Subsidiarity: putting civil society in its place

Communities doing their own thing

An article in today’s New Zealand Herald reported on the progress being made by a voluntary association of residents of the Matakana area developing local walkways.  Businesses, residents, and donors have pitched in to work with council support to create off-highway links between the rural settlements of Matakana Village, Point Wells, and Omaha Beach.  This is a modest local initiative.  It is a sign, though, of increasing community interest in the quality and accessibility of the physical environment outside our cities.  The Tawharanui Open Sanctuary Society is in the same vein (and locality).  Here, a local community voluntary initiative has been encouraged and supported by local government (the regional council) to achieve conservation outcomes. 

This is a sign that working together communities can deliver projects with a public benefit.  They do not need simply to join the queues contesting government delivery of taxpayer funded projects.

Volunteering, the foundation of civil society

Of course, community focused voluntarism has been with us for a long time, especially in urban areas.  The Māori Warden Association is an excellent example we are all familiar with in New Zealand.  The NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations includes around 130 member organisations, which among them employ 11,000 paid staff and represent 41,500 volunteers. The Federation is committed to building strong and equitable communities.

Volunteering New Zealand is an organisation that provides resources and support to organisations in emergency services, health, welfare, education, culture, faith based services, community support, ethnic interests, sport and recreation, conservation, special interests, advocacy and international volunteering.  It provides a strong framework of volunteering centres throughout the country. It  estimates that around 34% of the population aged over ten years is involved in volunteering. 

A high rate of volunteering is confirmed by recent research by Massey University and the Ministry of Social Development.  This puts New Zealand number seven among nations when measured as the share of the economically active population in the not-for-profit workforce.

This is all evidence that New Zealand enjoys a strong civil society, made up of the range of organisations and associations of individuals (and businesses) that contribute freely to the effective functioning of communities without relying on the strictures of the state to do so. 

Civil society, the state, and the market

Civil society has long played a role in getting underprivileged communities moving in developing nations.  For them it may be the main means of group survival, and a force against anarchy.  Often non-government organisations arise from the ground up and become important organising agencies for infrastructure and services in poor communities which depend more on social capital than state direction and resources.  

Now, it seems, civil society may have a more visible role to play as developed nations move into a new, fiscally challenged phase of slow growth and development.

An active civil society can underpin social progress and build stronger communities, ideally supported by the state.  Even better, civil society, the state, and commercial organisations (those regulated by the market) can come together to achieve beneficial social and economic outcomes.  

It’s interesting that a growing awareness of the potential of civil society has triggered some rethinking even in conservative quarters.  Think Tank Res Publica with its emphasis on a more inclusive form of democracy has informed the British government’s thinking about new ways of advancing the social programme, ways less dependent on welfare and more on capacity building. 

There is a risk that moving more towards a society based on voluntarism is no more than a means of running down central government, undoing hard-fought for welfare programmes.  Some equate it with inserting the market where the state has traditionally operated. But this thinking risks confusing the elevation of civil society with corporatisation of services that no longer fit comfortably into the state’s mandate. 

Sure, the relationship between state, civil society and the market needs to be debated.  But that should not prevent us exploring what is potentially a much more effective and balanced form of government (and governance) in which communities, business, and governments act in partnership.

Subsidiarity – a better form of governance?

I have recently been involved in a project looking at subsidiarity in Lombardy (population 9.9m ) in northern Italy.  Subsidiarity is the principle that responsibilities for governing should be allocated from central to decentralised agencies wherever practical.  This is the vertical subsidiarity that features in much of the literature about democracy and governance.  The rationale is that decisions are best taken as close as possible to where they will have most effect.  This arrangement helps communities relate to different tiers of government while providing for more effective governance.

In Lombardy the related principle of horizontal subsidiarity is also important.  This sees functions allocated to the agencies most suited to implementing them.  These may be voluntary or commercial organisations.  Functions that have traditionally been the role of government might move out under these circumstances.  It goes without saying that if the government does allocate responsibility to an outside agency it needs to be accompanied by public funding and monitoring to ensure the best return on the taxpayer investment.  The point is, though, that government need not take direct responsibility for delivery  to get the best outcome.

A suggestion: endorsing subsidiarity in the constitution

Built on our strong and growing civil society, an established and transparent market place, and sound agencies of government, the forthcoming review of the New Zealand constitution might consider vertical and horizontal subsidiarity as potential governing principles, and in doing so acknowledge and endorse the growing importance of community-based organisations in future New Zealand governments.

The constitution of local government

Another constitutional review

Constitutional arrangements in New Zealand are up for review again, just over five years since the last inquiry was published.  The terms of reference this time appear more focused - on electoral matters, Crown-Māori relationships, bill of rights issues, and the matter of a written constitution.

This blog considers where local government falls in New Zealand’s constitution.  It’s an issue that I think needs to be brought squarely into the mix, not just as a detail when considering Māori representation.

Report of the Constitutional Arrangements Committee, 2005

The last review decided that New Zealand’s constitution is one of “pragmatic evolution”.  It is based, the panel said, on New Zealanders’ instinct to fix things when they need fixing, when they can fix them, without necessarily relating them to any grand philosophical scheme. 

Lack of an underlying philosophy or consideration of the relationship between constitutional and democratic principles is a bit worrying.  Pragmatism can be ad hocery by another name.  It hardly makes for consistency or good government. 

Some of the concerns raised by the panel in the last review are also a bit of a worry:

“ Minor repairs here and there may alter the overall balance between the branches of government in a way that is not necessarily foreseen or intended. We are concerned that this has happened recently.

“Committee members offer different examples. Among them are

• the conferring of powers of general competence on local government

• the postulation of “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” in legislation and the judges’ role in   elucidating them in the course of interpreting the phrase in the context of the particular statute

• the question whether state education is required to be secular” (P12)

A philosophical grounding – perhaps laid out in a written constitution – should avoid such concerns. 

Focusing just on the first concern: there is clearly discomfort that the Local Government Act 2002 broadened the powers of local councils.  Why?  Is the constitution just about protecting the power of one group over another?  Does local government not exist in its own right, but only at the pleasure of central government?  Is this constitutionally sensible? 

Federalism puts local first

Consider the experience of the former colonial states most like New Zealand.  Australia, Canada, and the United States all have written constitutions.  They were drawn up by federations of erstwhile separate provinces or states – former colonies.  Through federation they created and formally conferred selected powers on a central government.  These powers related to functions best performed in a united way at the centre.  They included defence, trade, property rights, and currency, for example. 

The point is that the central – federal – governments were created by the provincial governments.  The centre’s powers were conferred by the people through a written constitution.

Consequently, state or provincial governments in these countries empower local government, mainly to undertake functions best performed “on the ground”. 

In the United States local powers are defined widely.  Municipalities are typically involved in local infrastructure, parks, reserves and recreation, police, fire services, emergency management and services, urban planning, economic promotion, housing, transportation, court activity.  Given these local responsibilities local government is an important focus of democracy, and drives the character and quality of local life.

Creation of a centralised state in New Zealand

New Zealand is different.  We have a gap where provinces once existed, and local government remains subject to central edict.  The reasons lie in our constitutional history.

We could consider the Treaty of Waitangi as being parallel to the written constitution of those other post-colonial states.  The difference is that through the Treaty Māori ceded certain powers best implemented centrally to the British Crown rather than to an agency of their own making. 

Consequently, New Zealand’s arrangements for government were designed by the British Parliament.  In particular, the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act created six provincial councils, a legislature, a central House of Representatives, and defined relations among them.  

Land wars and the demands of development in sparsely settled areas mean that the provinces struggled financially.  In the end, bickering among them and the emergence of separatist movements in the South Island led to their abolition in 1876.  Since then, local government has operated at the behest of central government. 

Consequently, the power of people and their communities depends on the goodwill of nationally elected representatives and a highly centralised bureaucracy.

Shifting the balance

Historical circumstances, small scale communities, and a unique if contested contractual place for Māori may justify New Zealand’s singular form of democracy. 

But the fact that conferring the power of general competence on local government disturbed central politicians in the 2005 review does raise questions around how rights are protected -- or evolve -- in an unwritten constitution.  Federal arrangements elsewhere certainly spell out the relationship between central and local (state or provincial) government more clearly on the basis that power is ceded by the people to their representatives, not the other way round. 

As it turns out the central politicians responsible for the last review need not have worried about what they might have away.  Any concession of authority was more form than substance.  It certainly did not stop central government from stepping in and reshaping Auckland. 

Maybe the centre has a case.  Local government does not always get things right.  But, then, nor does central government. 

Distrust of local by central government is a form of distrust in citizens and their communities.  That’s too bad in a democracy.  And perhaps it’s a state of affairs that the forthcoming constitutional review should confront.

Consider the possibility that communities might play a bigger rather than smaller role in democracy.  That building capacity in communities is one way of reducing the excesses of central government.  That civil society and voluntarism could contribute more to shaping New Zealand, and central government less. 

These propositions might require some radical rethinking about constitutional matters.  But through them we might just put the demos – the people in their territories – back into our democracy.