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

Ethics and International Affairs

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 67-85

  Erskine, Toni ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84954185868     PISSN: 08926794     EISSN: 17477093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7093.2001.tb00359.x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933).
2. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
3. Social Theory of International Politics., pp. 215–224.
4. I discuss the prevalence of this assumption within the discipline of international relations in the introduction to T. Erskine, ed., Can Institutions Have Duties? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2002).
5. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
6. Onora O'Neill, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. 12, Nuclear We a pons, Deterrence, and Disarmament, David Copp, ed. (1986), p. 51.
7. Daniel Warner, An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991).
8. See An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations., pp. 62, 65, 66, 69.
9. Peter French, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 46, 5, 10.
10. Collective and Corporate Responsibility., p. 13.
11. Collective and Corporate Responsibility.
12. Collective and Corporate Responsibility., p. 85.
13. French is quoting from David Wiggens, “Locke, Butler, and the Stream of Consciousness: And Men as a Natural Kind,” in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 161.
14. The phrase “networking institutions” is used by, among others, Onora O'Neill in “From Statist to Global Conceptions of Justice,” in Christoph Hubig, ed., Cognito Humana: Dynamik des Wissens und der Werte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), pp. 374–376.
15. Chris Brown provides an alternative perspective in “Moral Agency and International Society” below, pp. 87–98.
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).
17. See O'Neill, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” p. 63.
18. See Quentin Skinner, “The State,” in Terrence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson, eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 102.
19. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Richard Tuck, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
20. David Runciman lends support to this interpretation in “Is the State a Corporation?” Government and Opposition 35 (Winter 2000), p. 92, fn. 4.
21. Government and Opposition., p. 91.
22. 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).
23. Such a claim is both implicitly and explicitly made in the discipline of international relations. See Erskine, “Introduction,” in Can Institutions Have Duties?
24. See Frances Harbour, “Collective Moral Agency and the Political Process,” in Can Institutions Have Duties?
25. O'Neill, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” pp. 65–66. Emphasis in original.
26. “Who Can Endeavour Peace?”.
27. 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 “A gents of Justice,” Metaphilosophy 32 (January 2001), p. 190.
28. Jackson, Quasi-States, p. 43.
29. Quasi-States., pp. 1, 11, and 30–31.
30. Quasi-States., p. 164.
31. Quasi-States., p. 22.
32. French, Collective and Corporate Responsibility, p. 127.
33. Jennifer A. Widner, “States and Statelessness in Late Twentieth-Century Africa,” Daedalus 124 (Summer 1995), p. 148. She refers specifically to Rwanda and Somalia.
34. Jackson, Quasi-States, p. 80.
35. See also Benno J. Ndulu and Stephen A. O'Connell, “Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (Summer 1999), p. 49.
36. Jackson, Quasi-States, p. 69.
37. Widner, “States and Statelessness,” p. 147
38. Robert H. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 295. These writers employ different terminology to refer to homologous distinctions.
39. See also Arthur A. Goldsmith, “Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa,” International Organization 55 (Winter 2001), p. 124
40. Jeffrey Herbst, “Responding to State Failure in Africa,” International Security 21 (Winter 1996/1997), p. 125.
41. Jackson, Quasi-States, p. 29.
42. Quasi-States., p. 168.
43. Quasi-States., p. 177.
44. David Williams, “Aid and Sovereignty: Quasi-States and the International Financial Institutions,” Review of International Studies 26, No. 4 (2000), pp. 557–573.
45. See Goldsmith, “Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa,” for an overview of positions.
46. Nicolas van de Walle, “Economic Reform in a Democratizing Africa,” Comparative Politics 32 (October 1999), p. 29.
47. Ndulu and O'Connell, “Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa,” p. 64.
48. Vinit Haksar, “Moral Agents,” in Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 499.
49. Carolyn M. Warner, “A Reply to A.G. Hopkins,” Review of International Studies 26 (April 2000), p. 324. My emphasis.
50. O'Neill, “Who Can Endeavour Peace?” p. 53.
51. 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. 56.
52. The possibility of designing institutions capable of responding to ethical reasoning is explored by Nicholas Rengger in Can Institutions Have Duties?