Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:31:19.223Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents: The Case of States and Quasi-States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Toni Erskine
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in international relations, or, in other words, identifying those bodies that can deliberate and act and thereby respond to ethical guidelines. Often, the most effective and relevant moral agents in international relations are not individuals but institutions. However, it is necessary to qualify any claim that institutions can bear duties in international relations. Not only must they possess capacities for decision-making and purposive action, they must also enjoy the conditions under which specific duties can be discharged. The importance of this latter stipulation can be usefully illustrated by examining the disparate circumstances within which states–those that exercise positive sovereignty and those that are sovereign only in name–are expected to act.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , September 2001 , pp. 67 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933Google Scholar).

2 Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

3 Ibid., pp. 215–24Google Scholar.

4 I discuss the prevalence of this assumption within the discipline of international relations in the introduction to Erskine, T., ed., Can Institutions Have Duties? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2002Google Scholar).

5 Jackson, Robert H., Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990Google Scholar).

6 O'Neill, Onora, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. 12, Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Disarmament, David Copp, ed. (1986), p. 51.Google Scholar

7 Warner, Daniel, An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991Google Scholar).

8 See ibid., pp. 62, 65, 66, 69Google Scholar.

9 French, Peter, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 46, 5, 10Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 13Google Scholar.

11 IbidGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 85. French is quoting from Wiggens, David, “Locke, Butler, and the Stream of Consciousness: And Men as a Natural Kind,” in Oksenberg Rorty, Amelie, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 161Google Scholar.

13 Although I think that this is an important criterion, it should be noted that some theorists would deny that even the individual human being fulfils it completely, arguing instead that individuals experience change and reconstitution over timeGoogle Scholar.

14 The phrase “networking institutions” is used by, among others, Onora O'Neill in “From Statist to Global Conceptions of Justice,” in Hubig, Christoph, ed., Cognito Humana: Dynamik des Wissens und der Werte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), pp. 374–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Chris Brown provides an alternative perspective in “Moral Agency and International Society” below, pp. 87–98Google Scholar.

16 The United Nations, moreover, presents the interesting case of a “collectivity of collectivities.” I discuss this in “'Blood on the UN's Hands: Assigning Responsibilities to Inter-Governmental Institutions” (paper to be presented at the ISA convention in New Orleans, March 2002)Google Scholar.

17 See O'Neill, , “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” p. 63Google Scholar.

18 See Skinner, Quentin, “The State,” in Ball, Terrence, Farr, James, and Hanson, Russell L., eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 102Google Scholar.

19 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, Tuck, Richard, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989Google Scholar). David Runciman lends support to this interpretation in “Is the State a Corporation?” Government and Opposition 35 (Winter 2000), p. 92Google Scholar, fn. 4.

20 Ibid., p. 91Google Scholar.

21 David Runciman, “The State as a Corporate Agent” (paper presented at the ISA/BISA Joint Special Workshop “Can Institutions Have Morals?” at the University of Cambridge, November 18—19, 2000)Google Scholar.

22 Such a claim is both implicitly and explicitly made in the discipline of international relations. See Erskine, “Introduction,” in Can Institutions Have DutiesGoogle Scholar?

23 See Frances Harbour, “Collective Moral Agency and the Political Process,” in Can Institutions Have Duties?Google Scholar

24 O'Neill, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” pp. 65–66. Emphasis in original.Google Scholar

25 IbidGoogle Scholar.

26 The lack of positive sovereignty experienced by some states is not an issue that Onora O'Neill herself ignores. She has since provided a valuable analysis of some of the difficulties that weak states face in , “Agents of Justice,” Metaphilosophy 32 (January 2001), p. 190Google Scholar.

27 Jackson, , Quasi-States, p. 43Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., pp. 1, 11, and 30–31Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 164Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 22Google Scholar.

31 French, , Collective and Corporate Responsibility, p.Google Scholar

32 Jennifer, A. Widner, “States and Statelessness in Late Twentieth-Century Africa,” Daedalus 124 (Summer 1995), p. 148Google Scholar. She refers specifically to Rwanda and Somalia.

33 Jackson, , Quasi-States, p. 80Google Scholar. See also Ndulu, Benno J. and O'Connell, Stephen A., “Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (Summer 1999), p. 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Jackson, , Quasi-States, p. 69Google Scholar.

35 Widner, “States and Statelessness,” p. 147; and Jackson, Robert H., The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 295Google Scholar. These writers employ different terminology to refer to homologous distinctions.

36 See also Arthur, A. Goldsmith, “Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa,” International Organization 55 (Winter 2001), p. 124Google Scholar; and Herbst, Jeffrey, “Responding to State Failure in Africa,” International Security 21 (Winter 1996/1997), p. 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Jackson, , Quasi-States, p. 29Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., p. 168Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 177Google Scholar.

40 Williams, David, “Aid and Sovereignty: Quasi-States and the International Financial Institutions,” Review of International Studies 26, No. 4 (2000), pp. 557–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See Goldsmith, “Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa,” for an overview of positionsGoogle Scholar.

42 van de Walle, Nicolas, “Economic Reform in a Democratizing Africa,” Comparative Politics 32 (October 1999), p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Ndulu and O'Connell, “Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa,” p. 64Google Scholar.

44 Haksar, Vinit, “Moral Agents,” in Craig, Edward, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 499Google Scholar.

45 Carolyn, M. Warner, “A Reply to A.G. Hopkins,” Review of International Studies 26 (April 2000), p. 324Google Scholar. My emphasis.

46 O'Neill, , “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” p. 53Google Scholar.

47 Michael Walzer coined the phrase “agent-of-last-resort” in an essay in which he contemplates a duty to intervene in specific instances of humanitarian crisis. See Walzer, , “The Politics of Rescue,” Social Research 62 (Spring 1995), p. 56Google Scholar.

48 The possibility of designing institutions capable of responding to ethical reasoning is explored by Nicholas Rengger in Can Institutions Have Duties?Google Scholar