7Give Communities Responsibility for Social Services

Communities are the wetlands of democracy. Local control of schools, social services, and public activities gives local officials meaningful responsibility and engages citizens in local democracy. People can innovate, and local leaders can draw on the energy and resources of volunteers. 

Local government is where citizens get hands-on experience with the workings of democracy. Local choices require citizens to grapple with realities of tradeoffs, risks, and conflicts in values that are inherent in democratic governance. Local control has a gravitational pull, where the prospect of concrete action brings citizens together to sort out differences. They learn to listen and to compromise, or else face disappointment before a local decision maker. Centralized rules, by contrast, are polarizing, and encourage people to pound the table for what they perceive as their legal entitlements.  

Federal and state bureaucracies have cast a heavy net over local services. Compliance with detailed dictates and extensive reporting requirements effectively puts educators and social service providers on a fixed route of march. Uniform rules may be appropriate for, say, protocols to prevent spread of a pandemic. But one-size-fits-all rules practically guarantee failure in dealing with homelessness and family-related problems, which are particularly ill-suited to uniform regulations. If a citizen has a better idea, chances are the rules won’t allow it. A culture of resignation replaces the spirit of problem-solving. 

Releasing the bureaucratic stranglehold on social services does not mean abdicating oversight. Federal government can audit a community’s effectiveness in providing social services, and withdraw federal funding for ineffective programs. Federal or state government can periodically evaluate schools for their overall performance, and intervene in troubled situations.

The concept of subsidiarity—placing responsibility for implementing public goals as close to the ground as practical—should be a guiding principle for remaking social service bureaucracies. Restoring local responsibility will revive America’s public culture, and society will benefit from a new level of local energy and engagement.