NEW ZEALAND/ Subsidiarity connects antipodes

The principle of subsidiarity, developed over the centuries as an alternative to the authoritarian model, which at its roots is susceptible to tyranny, of the modern state, continues to attract little attention outside Europe. This is despite the global dimensions of the clear crisis of the State, crushed by the weight of expenditure and public debt, which in severe cases, such as Italy, reaches over 50 percent of gross domestic production and blocks the growth of the country. 

Therefore, the case of far-off New Zealand, where they are seriously considering the principle of subsidiarity as a general criterion for the reorganization of their system of services to individuals and local communities, is extremely relevant. Geographically remote from Europe, with a capital city, Wellington, which is 18,581 km from Rome (but at the same time very similar, as a country with about 80 percent of the population of European origins and rooted in Anglo-Saxon tradition), New Zealand is thus the first country outside Europe to take this vast and systematic "philosophy", born and developed in continental Europe, into consideration, especially since this philosophy received special impetus from the Roman Catholic Church's social teaching, so that it is difficult, perhaps, that it find supporters in countries belonging to the Protestant tradition, or to non-Christian traditions.

This is even more significant considering that, as a rule, in nations that have been colonized and consist largely in descendants of European settlers, the primary political subject is the territory, the colony (which later becomes a country) in itself, and not the Communes like in Europe, and the distance between the government and the civil society is usually minimal. New Zealand fits into this rule well. Its institutions of local government have sprung up and grown under the strict control of the federal government, and traditionally there have been no relevant attempts at autonomous civil society. The only exception, though not a secondary one, is in the case of the Maori community, the original inhabitants of the country which make up about 20% of the country’s current population and who have a certain number of collective rights from the Treaty of Waitangi (1870).