It is common practice to hold states responsible for their wrongdoings. Consider the following examples: in the aftermath of World War II, West Germany accepted respon­sibility for the crimes of the Holocaust,

and transferred compensatory payments to the State of Israel and to diaspora Jewish survivors (Colonomos and Armstrong 2006). In 1991 the United Nations Compensation Commission held Iraq responsible for its invasion of Kuwait, and imposed on it compensation payments to the individuals, businesses and states that were harmed by its actions.

It is also a common view that citizens are responsible for their state’s wrongdoings. Consider the following examples: In 1947 the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote an influen­tial text — The Question of German Guilt — where he identified four different senses in which German citizens share guilt for the Nazi administration’s crimes (Jaspers 2000). In 2014 dozens of Israeli military intelligence officers signed a letter in which they announced their refusal to continue to serve in the Israeli military, in light of its record of human rights violations, and their responsibility as citizens to oppose them (8200 Refusniks letter 2014). And (by far more controversially) in 2005 a terrorist blew himself up on a crowded London Underground train. He justified his actions by referring to the responsibility of British citizens for the British government’s policies in the Middle East (Guardian 2005).

However, recent philosophical literature suggests that assertions about state and citi­zens’ responsibility are not as straightforward as they might appear. Even the few examples I mentioned raise various challenges. The first is conceptual: In what sense are states and citizens responsible for wrongdoing? Does the claim translate into the idea that a state and its citizens are blameworthy for wrongful policies? Does it follow that they ought to apologize, or offer compen­sation, or be punished when they commit such wrongs? These are all very different meanings of what being responsible means, with various practical implications. A second challenge is normative: the idea of collective responsibility that underpins claims about state and citizens’ responsibility might appear to be in tension with common individualist sensitivities, according to which people should be held responsible for what they do and not for what other members of their groups do.

In virtually every case of state responsibility, the population that is eventually called upon to carry the costs of responsibility includes members who are, by any standard, morally blameless. [...This] may seem as unfair and ethically backwards as the treatment meted out under primitive systems of collective responsibility in which whole tribes or nations are subject to reprisals.

Finally, even if we are able to resist these conclusions, and to offer a solid argument for why citizens are responsible for their states’ actions in a way that does not violate our individualist sensitivities, there is the question of the scope of that responsibility: Are citizens always respon­sible for their state’s wrongdoings, or might some citizens be off the hook? And does the argu­ment apply equally to all regime types, from radical totalitarian states to advanced democracies?

Each of these questions has received attention in the burgeoning literature on collective responsibility in the state. My goal here is to provide an overview of these debates and to high­light what I think are some of the most promising solutions they offer to these challenges. The chapter develops as follows. I first overview the various conceptual ways in which states and citizens might be responsible for state wrongdoing.¹ I then turn to whether, and how, states are responsible in their own right for their wrongful policies. Finally, I explore whether individual citizens are responsible (in the various senses I identify) for the wrongs committed by the state.

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