Sovereignty: at what level is a decision legitimate?

Every public decision is taken somewhere: municipality, department, region, state, group of states, international body. The question of sovereignty bears on the choice of that level, and on what is needed for a decision taken there to be accepted as legitimate by those it binds.

Two criteria regularly conflict. The first is effectiveness: a decision should be taken at the level where the problem exists, which argues for a broad level on subjects that cross borders. The second is the closeness of control: the more distant the level, the harder it is for a citizen to weigh on the decision and to sanction its authors.

Both criteria are democratic, and that is what makes the debate serious. Deciding too low is sometimes not deciding at all; deciding too high is deciding without being able to be disavowed.

The principle of subsidiarity proposes a rule of arbitration: decide at the lowest possible level, and move up only when that level cannot handle the problem. The rule is elegant and its application is disputed, because judging that a level cannot handle a problem is already a political decision.

It is one of the reasons why debates on this subject appear technical while being highly conflictual. They bear less on the rule, widely accepted, than on who applies it and by what criteria, which brings us back to the question of control.

Delegating a competence to a higher level is not necessarily losing power: it may be gaining some on a problem one could not handle alone, in exchange for a loss of mastery over how it is handled. It is an exchange, and its assessment depends on what one gets in return.

The real point of disagreement bears on the reversibility of that exchange. A delegation one can take back does not bind as an irreversible one does, and that is often where the real divergence lies, rather than on the principle of cooperating.

A position on this dimension indicates where you place the cursor between the effective handling of a problem and democratic mastery of the decision. It says nothing about your attachment to a country, a culture or a history, which belong to other questions.

This distinction is often lost in everyday debate, where the two registers mix. Separating them makes it possible to note frequent combinations, such as a strong attachment to a country combined with a preference for decisions taken at a broader level on certain precise subjects.

Take four subjects: air quality, corporate taxation, the organisation of schooling, defence. For each, ask yourself at what level the decision should be taken, and why.

Most people do not answer the same for all four, and that is the interesting result. A uniform position, everything at the same level, is rarer than one thinks, and often a sign that one has answered a question of identity rather than a question of level.