Subsidiarity: Federalism Over Catholic Social Ethics?

In the E.U., the principle of subsidiarity functions in theory like the Tenth Amendment does in the U.S.—again in theory. In both cases, public authority on a given domain or policy-area is preferentially to be exercised at the state rather than federal level. The principle, while not federalism per se, can be an element of it. Taking subsidiarity to be “really federalism” turns the latter into an alliance—giving the states potentially so much power that the government of the federation or union itself cannot act as a check on the state governments.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

Wal-Mart: Political Contributions as Bribery

In September 2005, “a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country. . . . Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: ‘There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.’”[1]

 Critics protesting a new Wal-Mart store after the bribery scandal    John Moore/Getty

The full essay is in The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.

1. David Barstow, “Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle,” The New York Times, April 21, 2012.