Introduction
Which entities bear responsibility in international relations? This chapter answers this question via four illustrative case studies: states, intergovernmental organizations, the affluent, and the West.
Section 23.2 begins by distinguishing causal, retrospective, and prospective responsibility. The rest of the chapter focuses on the latter two, which, I assume, can be borne only by moral agents. Section 23.3 provides a permissive account of the conditions under which a collective is a moral agent and demonstrates that it applies straightforwardly to most states. Section 23.4 turns to a more contentious case: intergovernmental organizations. I argue that some IGOs are moral agents, and so are liable to retrospective and prospective responsibility. But this conception of collective moral agency is not as inclusive as one might hope. In section 23.5, I demonstrate that it straightforwardly does not apply to the affluent; in section 23.6, I demonstrate that it (somewhat less straightforwardly) does not apply to the West. The result is that neither “the affluent” (as a group) nor “the West” can bear retrospective or prospective responsibility— though they may well be candidates for causal responsibility, and their members are severally candidates for retrospective and prospective responsibility.23.2
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