Collective Moral Responsibility

We take collective responsibility to be the responsibility of a collective agent. In contrast, indi­vidual responsibility is the responsibility of an individual agent. Insofar as a collective entity bears responsibility for an outcome, it does so in its own right, meaning that the respon­sibility befalls the collective, and not necessarily any of its constitutive parts.³ In order for something to be collectively responsible, it needs to be an agent.

The last couple of decades have seen increased development in the debate over philosophy of the social world, including groups. Consequently, there are a number of different accounts of collective agency. We shall look at what we take to be the most prominent of these—that of Christian List and Philip Pettit—and apply it to the case of the state. (For space reasons, we will only run through one account. But for discussion of a range of accounts, and whether states count as collective agents relative to them, see Lawford-Smith forthcoming, ch. 3.)

List and Pettit take there to be three necessary conditions for agency (List and Pettit 2011: 20).⁴ First, in order for something to be an agent, it must possess the capacity for having representational states. These are representations or beliefs that depict the world. Second, it needs the capacity for having motivational states. These are desires, which motivate the agent to act. What’s important here is that the relevant type of mental states in humans—beliefs, desires— have a functional role equivalent in non-human agents (List and Pettit 2011: 21). Third, it needs the capacity to process these intentional states and then act on them.

In addition, List and Pettit require that in order to qualify as an agent, a collective must fulfill some minimal level of rationality and autonomy. For our purposes, it suffices that a col­lective is rational in the sense that it cannot hold inconsistent beliefs and desires (List and Pettit 2011: 37). To count as autonomous in List and Pettit’s sense, the collective’s mental states must be independent from the members’ mental states (List and Pettit 2011: ch. 3). We interpret this requirement in a weak way: the collective decision can depart from any individual’s decisions (rather than must depart). It could be that one or several members have the same belief content as the collective, but that the beliefs are independent because the members and the collective arrived at their beliefs through different processes.

So far, we haven’t said anything about moral responsibility. On List and Pettit’s account, when a collective agent faces a normatively significant choice, it is fit to be held responsible if and only if it has the capacity to make normative judgments and has the control necessary to choose between the morally relevant choices (List and Pettit 2011: 155—6). In total, this gives us seven distinct conditions, namely: capacity for the functional equivalents of beliefs and desires; the ability to process and act on them; capacity to survive membership changes; (capacity for) rationality; autonomy; and (capacity for) normative judgment.

The question, of course, is whether states can be said to meet the above conditions. If they can, then they are candidates for being culpable for climate change, and having a serious respon­sibility to mitigate emissions as a result. Before we try to establish whether the state is an agent, though, we first need to say something about what the state is.

To take an example, the Swedish state is the organized political unit that exercises authority over the geographical territory known as “Sweden” as well as over the Swedish people. This entity consists of the executive government, including the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers who head the different ministries. But it also encompasses the parliament (the Riksdag, which has legislative power) and the courts that together comprise the judiciary. In addition, it also includes a number of different government agencies administered by the executive gov­ernment and the parliament. These include, but are not limited to, the Swedish Armed Forces, law enforcement, the central bank, and the Swedish Tax Agency. Can this political unit be a collective agent? We think so.

For starters, this entity survives changes in membership. To take an example, the exchange of one of the ministers of the executive government for someone else does not change the identity of the government. Next, the government routinely forms beliefs about the world and holds desires about how to engage with it. The formation of these intentional states can be made based on voting—as when the parliament passes legislation—or be consensus-based—as when the executive government makes a decision.

Rationality is ensured since the government has the capacity to revise inconsistent beliefs and desires, for instance by consulting with advisors and committees. Regarding autonomy, we only required that it is possible for the decisions of the collective to depart from the members’ decisions. In this way, the government achieves autonomy because it’s possible, for example, that the decision each minister of the executive government agrees to is not what they actually want, but what they each think that the others want. Finally, since it has the capacity for beliefs, and nothing stops these from being moral in nature, the government has the capacity for forming normative judgments. Insofar as the state is in control of its normatively significant choices, it is therefore fit to be held morally responsible.

So far, then, we have shown that, if we accept List and Pettit’s account of agency, the state can be a collective agent, capable of bearing moral responsibility. The next question is whether states are responsible, in the strongest sense that comes from being culpable, for mitigating cli­mate change.

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