The Principle of Subsidiarity in Organisation of Public Authority at the Regional Level in Foreign Federal Jurisdictions

This paper is both a theoretical work in the field of foreign constitutional law and a comparative legal study in the field of relationships between different levels of power in the federal model of state structure. This paper is dedicated to the study of subsidiarity as a principle of organizing public authority in federal states. Based on the analysis of constitutional and legal norms of foreign states, the practice of its application, the provisions of several supranational documents, the genesis of the principle of subsidiarity and its development in legal doctrine, the authors attempt to clarify the concept of subsidiarity and determine its institutional expression in constitutional law. The authors propose a classification of manifestations of the principle of subsidiarity depending on the institutions in which it is embodied. It is proposed, in particular, to distinguish static subsidiarity, which is manifested in the presence of an exhaustive list of powers of the federal government when securing the competence of the federation subjects in the form of an open list or according to the residual principle, and dynamic subsidiarity, which is expressed in the optimization of competence distribution through the institutions of federal intervention and delegation of powers. The manifestations of subsidiarity are also related to the functioning of communication mechanisms in the state that ensure mutual information exchange between public authorities of the federation and subjects concerning their interests, needs, problems, as well as coordination of their activities. The authors traced the development of the principle of subsidiarity addressing the constitutional experience of such states as the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of India, the Swiss Confederation, Canada, Australia. The paper refers to the features of the federal structure of these and some other foreign jurisdictions, and briefly evaluates the principle of European subsidiarity.