The notion of collective responsibility is often invoked in order to identify the persons and entities that can be blamed for an event that has occurred.

Individual and collective blame­worthiness for an event can be established through causal connections, intentions, relationships, or some combination of these features. Some argue that while we can identify group respon­sibility for actions, we cannot hold individuals or groups responsible for what they fail to do.

In this chapter, I argue that a revised version of May’s account of shared responsibility for wrongdoing can help us address important problems in the domain of collective inaction: namely, failures to prevent further harm. In section 15.1, I set up May’s account of shared responsibility, focusing on the features that are most relevant for the issue of shared responsibility for col­lective inaction. In section 15.2, I explore what I consider to be the most compelling criticisms of May’s view and suggest that his view should be more focused on achieving certain states of affairs than performing backward-looking accountability assessments. In section 15.3, I use this revised version of May’s view to sketch a way to think about accountability for particular failures to prevent harm, where no specific individual or entity has the positive obligation to protect individuals or groups.

15.1