Subsidiarity, Suffrage and Political Experience

Last updated on: July 28, 2016 at 3:59 am by Sam Rocha

Subsidiarity, Suffrage and Political Experience 2016-07-28T03:59:28-05:00 Sam Rocha

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No one writing from a national platform can tell you how to vote. Especially one, like me, writing from Canada. The reason is this: I don’t know who is running for your local school board, sheriff, county commissioner, mayor, State house of representatives, governor, and so on.

A basic principle of Catholic Social Teaching is subsidiarity. This is basically a social criterion that operates with an imperative like Occam’s Razor: entities should not be multiplied without necessity. Subsidiarity is measured and complimented by solidarity.

Subsidiarity is rightly understood as limiting, chastening principle that aligns with the general tenets of American conservatism that touts “small government.” This does not mean that subsidiarity can grow into isolationism or radical individualism or anarchic libertarianism. Solidarity prevents that.

Subsidiarity does mean that our political relations begin with our familial, parochial, and local civic life. To neglect or to upset that life for the sake of a form of life that is outside of that scale is out of balance. The implication for this is simple to observe in any political life.

This firstly means that voting every four years in a national election and showing no concern for other elections is out of step with subsidiarity. It means that politics is a daily suffrage that may not actualize in a ballot, but can build the smaller forms of conviviality and political consciousness that eventually grow into larger forms of political will.

Secondly it means that the political races that matter to you, the politics that move you, should begin with local forms of association and daily life. As the representation becomes more distant, the affections become less intimate and, rightly, more calculated, imperfect, and even instrumental in some cases.

Thirdly a politician in the best sense is someone who can show a progression of civic experience and service that begins in local and small associations. Those who lack micropolitical experience will struggle to properly understand not only their local constituents, but also the very political order of their vocation. Perhaps they can overcome these limitations, but that burden is on them to mend and reconcile.

This means that Catholic voters who neglect subsidiarity in their suffrage, are not voting responsibly or with a properly formed conscience. This also means that Catholics should expect politicians to first and foremost understand the proper scale of political life, and have experiences that confirm their ability to carry out whatever scale of office they seek.

Surely a person running for school board without any evidence of previous concern for children, schools, or that scale of life in some way will be suspicious as a candidate, and for good reason. Surely someone who believes in small government cannot neglect local affairs at the expense of national political theatre. Surely a voter cannot vote every four years with a sense of moral obligation who does not tend first to the daily politics of everyday suffrage and smaller elections: those less multiplied associations build a conscience that can reasonably and faithfully generate an ordered political will.

During this election, if you only know who is running for president, then perhaps you are being politically irresponsible. Conservatives once believed that this scale of political life was the atomic element of a well-ordered city, state, and nation. Today that vision of conservatism is gone in national party politics but it need not be absent in city halls, living rooms, and grocery stores.

As a US citizen living in Canada, I cannot vote in my local political community. I can only work to choose what is best for my family, along with my family, and work my way from there. As a US citizen, I am more and more disenchanted by national politics, and I have no civic will elsewhere in terms of political suffrage. But I can make choices about the education of my children, where I spend my money, how I spend my time, and more–but not much more in terms of political will. You might consider this blog as an alternative for an expat.

Treasure your political will, form it; use it wisely and well. Do not neglect out of hand even one principle like subsidiarity, much less all the rest.

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