Presented by Christian Hölzl on 16 October 2026 at the conference “Multicultural Citizenship and its Challenges: Recognition, Subsidiarity, and Rule of Law” (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and Ittihadiyoun, Beirut), session “The Concept of Subsidiarity”.
Subsidiarity means that power rises from the bottom: people unite in municipalities, municipalities in cantons, and cantons in a federation. The slides contrast it with decentralization, where the center lends power and keeps control, and present the three Swiss levels – federal, cantonal and municipal – with their rule: the municipality decides what it can do alone, the canton decides what it can do, and only then the federation decides.
A quiz then asks who decides what – schools and history books, defense, roads, foreign affairs, marriage and family, currency, central bank, police, borders and customs, taxes – and gives the Swiss answer for each: the cantons shape schools and their community narrative, the federation holds defense, foreign affairs and currency, and roads, banks, police and taxes are shared across the levels.