Page 140 - Culture Society and Economy

Robotham-07.qxd 1/31/2005 6:24 PM Page 133

‘LOCALIZATION’ EXPLORED

alternative seeks to do therefore is not to eliminate market relations but
to confine them as far as possible to the local level. It is strictly a program
for localization.
The issue therefore arises as to what exactly is regarded as local and
how this term is concretely specified. Because of the emphasis on the
reduction of size and the return to ‘human-scale’ living, this is a crucial
question. Unfortunately inconsistent and variable answers are given. The
local is said variously to be the local (rural?) community; an association
of adjacent communities – a regional community; or even at times the
nation. Indeed, the authors speak repeatedly about obtaining assistance
from the European Union and obviously take it for granted that this
regional bloc of nations will continue to exist and grow. Likewise,
allowance is made for the fact that developing countries may themselves
need or wish to come together in a larger economic bloc, for similar rea-
sons as the nations of Europe. Clearly this is conceptually very untidy.
After all, if the area from Limerick to the Elbe can be regarded as ‘local’,
then in the same manner NAFTA must also be local, at which point the
entire model falls apart. This issue is never satisfactorily resolved but the
authors do make an attempt to deal with this objection.
The concept used to address this problem is the notion of ‘subsidiar-
ity’ developed in relationship to attempts to democratize the mechanisms
of the European Union. What this is supposed to mean is that anything
14
which can be better done at the local level should be transferred, say,
from Brussels to the nation–state level, from the nation to the region and
from the region to the local community as necessity dictates. The notion
as it is interpreted here is one of the subordination of central organs to
the local ones. Power should flow upwards from the local to the central.
Indeed, whatever powers the center exercises in the ideal version of this
model are residual ones left over after local authorities have acted. In
other words, this is almost a complete reversal of the notion of delegation
of power from the center to the region and downward – the traditional
notion of sovereignty long characteristic of the nation–state. Subsidiarity,
in this particular unique sense, is not a case where the center lays down
and maintains overall rules and procedures and then delegates specifics
to regional and local bodies, as in the proposals for constitutional reform
15
of the welfare state developed by Maus. It is more ambitious even than
a federal system in which ‘states’ rights’ dominate. For here ‘community
rights’ would trump even ‘states’ rights’.
Thus, even if a nation–state persists economically and politically and
also regional blocs of one sort or another, these will still be subordinated to
local communities by resorting to the kind of constitutional and political

133