Axial Shift : City Subsidiarity and the World System in the 21st Century

This book uses historical analysis, constitutional economics, and complexity theory to furnish an account of city subsidiarity as a legal, ethical, political, and economic principle. The book contemplates subsidiarity as a constitutional principle, where cities would benefit from much wider local autonomy. Constitutional economics suggests an optimal limit to jurisdictional footprints (territories). This entails preference for political orders where sovereignty is shared between different cities rather states where capital cities dominate. The introduction of city subsidiarity as a constitutional principle holds the key to economic prosperity in a globalizing world. Moreover, insights from complexity theory suggest subsidiarity is the only effective response to the 'problem of scale.' It is a fitness trait that prevents highly complex systems from collapsing. The nation-state is a highly complex system within which cities function as 'attractors.' The collapse of such systems would ensue if there were strong coupling between attractors. Such coupling obtains under legal monism. Only subsidiarity can make the eventuality of collapse improbable. The emergent and self-organizing properties of subsidiarity entail a shift in policy emphasis towards cities with a wide margin of autonomy. Benjamen Gussen is a constitutional jurist at the Swinburne School of Law. He was admitted to the legal profession in New Zealand in 2011, and in Australia in 2014. His main area of research is comparative constitutional law-and-economics. He is an expert on the principle of subsidiarity and its application in unitary and federal polities. Dr Gussen is the Vice President of the Australian Law and Economics Association. Prior to joining Swinburne, Dr Gussen taught at the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology. Before embarking on his academic career, Dr Gussen worked in government and industry in the United States, the Persian Gulf, and New Zealand.-- Provided by publisher Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii On the Problem of Scale (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 1-18 Economic Cubism, Economic Surrealism, and Scale Relativity (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 19-46 Scale Invariance in Constitutional Political Economy (CPE) (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 47-85 The Tower of Babel Syndrome (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 87-124 A Décollage of Kropotkin, Mumford, Boulding, Bookchin, and Schumacher (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 125-149 The Morphogenetic Foundations of Economic Change (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 151-197 The Principle of Subsidiarity (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 199-238 The Auxilium Model (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 239-270 An Economic Model of Political Fission and Fusion (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 271-316 Case Study: New England and New Zealand (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 317-351 Case Study: The Territorial Evolution of Australia and the United States (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 353-389 Case Study: The United States, Canada, and Australia (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 391-414 Towards an Olympic World System (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 415-475 Envoi: The Need for Jarlsberg Constitutions (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages 477-482 Correction to: Axial Shift (Benjamen Gussen)....Pages C1-C2 Back Matter ....Pages 483-493