Federalism and Subsidiarity: NOMOS LV

NOMOS Series #55

by James E. Fleming (Editor), Jacob T. Levy (Editor)

In Federalism and Subsidiarity, a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law, and philosophy address the application and interaction of the concept of federalism within law and government. What are the best justifications for and conceptions of federalism? What are the most useful criteria for deciding what powers should be allocated to national governments and what powers reserved to state or provincial governments? What are the implications of the principle of subsidiarity for such questions? What should be the constitutional standing of cities in federations? Do we need to “remap” federalism to reckon with the emergence of translocal and transnational organizations with porous boundaries that are not reflected in traditional jurisdictional conceptions? Examining these questions and more, this latest installation in the NOMOS series sheds new light on the allocation of power within federations.

Genres: Politics

464 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2014

Reviews

[Russell Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb collection of philosophical and theoretical essays on the many facets of an issue that I've come to be fascinated by: the sharing of political power through federal arrangements, and the distribution of political authority along municipal, local, regional, provincial, or other "leveled" lines, as the principles of subsidiarity imply. That the two concepts are not necessarily always compatible, and that they require sometime contradictory justifications, is probably the central idea--or rather the central problem demanding further thought--which I take away from this book. My particular applause for those sections of the book that focused on the particular twists in the topic which the nature and history of cities and constitutions bring to the discussion, as those were the ones I got the most out of.