INTRODUCTION: Responsibility in International Political Philosophy

Transcription

1 INTRODUCTION: Responsibility in International Political Philosophy International political philosophy is concerned with questions of justice at the global level. Four fields of enquiry are particularly pressing: climate change, global poverty, immigration, and historical injustice. The links between them are well-documented. Climate justice interlinks with concerns for global poverty, since some of the countries predicted to be most affected by climatic changes are already countries where severe poverty is widespread (see, for example, Maslin 2009). However, attempts to slow down climate change might likewise, have adverse consequences for the economies of developing countries (see, for example, Baer et al. 2008). The combined impact of climactic change and poverty is likely to result in more migration (see, for example, Myers 2002), which raises questions of whether there is a duty to allow entry to immigrants, and if so, on what terms. Finally, all these questions have a temporal dimension. Our obligations towards future people shape our duties regarding climate change and influence any trade-offs we make when balancing duties regarding the fight against poverty with duties regarding emission reductions. The past might also have an impact. Some have argued that historical injustices matter morally, for example in the case of global poverty: an agent connected in some way to the action or actor that created an injustice has stronger duties of redress than someone unconnected (e.g. Butt 2008; Miller 2007). It has also been argued that a fair division of duties for addressing the consequences of climate change should take into account responsibility for causing it, by linking duties of redress in some way to current and past greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (e.g. Meyer and Roser 2010). One central philosophical concept is present in all these debates: responsibility. This might seem an unusual claim since much of contemporary political philosophy, including international political philosophy has been concerned with the assignment of rights. The prevalent question has been what am I (or another agent) entitled to? (O Neill 1996, 127). However, many an account of rights be it a justification or rejection of ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 19, no. 4(2012): by Centre for Ethics, KU Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: /EP

2 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 universal human rights, socio-economic rights, group rights or rights for future generations has been accepted or rejected because of what it has said, or failed to say, about the corresponding notion of duty or responsibility. Those who have rejected socio-economic rights have often done so on the basis that it is either impossible to specify who should do what to honour those rights, or, where such attempts are made, that they are too demanding on the identified duty-bearers. We might say that the acid test for an account of rights is who can be identified as the bearer(s) of the corresponding duties who or what is responsible for (i) honouring and (ii) protecting rights-claims. A bolder claim would be to say that it is questions of responsibility, rather than rights, which deserve to be taken as the key issue in distributive justice. However, before either of these claims can be made, it is necessary to consider what is meant by responsibility. In everyday language we often use you are responsible for cleaning up the kitchen and you have a duty to clean up the kitchen as synonyms, but the relationship between responsibility and duty is more complex, given that responsibility is a concept that admits of many different meanings. At the most basic, we might distinguish backward-looking responsibility (responsibility for having brought about a certain state of affairs) from forward-looking responsibility (responsibility to act with regard to a certain state of affairs). According to this understanding of the distinction (see Miller 2007) only forward-looking responsibility reflects duties. Causal responsibility and the notions of outcome responsibility and moral responsibility (Honoré 1999; Miller 2007) can be understood as types of backward-looking responsibility. Within forwardlooking responsibility there are the concepts of remedial responsibility (Miller 2007) and prospective responsibility (Duff 1998). Prospective responsibilities are those I have before the event, those matters that it is up to me to attend to or take care of (Duff 1998). Prospective responsibility thus can be understood as a duty to care for a particular person or matter (for a broader notion of prospective responsibility, see Heyd [ ] in the present volume). 614

3 INTRODUCTION Some have argued that an agent does not necessarily have to be responsible in the backward-looking sense in order to be responsible in the forward-looking sense. Other principles for grounding remedial responsibility might be the fact that someone benefited from the action whose undesirable consequences now need to be addressed, the capacity to help, or roles such as referring to membership in shared community (see, for example, Miller 2007). Others still wish to make backward-looking responsibility the central criterion in assigning forward-looking responsibility. This distinction also accounts for an important division among cosmopolitans: those who defend an interactionalist cosmopolitanism (e.g. Singer 1972; Caney 2005) base their cosmopolitanism in the simple fact that we can benefit or harm people anywhere in the world. They thus refer to an idea of forward-looking responsibility for the wellbeing of others. Others defend an institutionalist cosmopolitanism (e.g. Pogge 2002; Young 2006). They argue that there are duties to non-compatriots because globalisation entails that people co-exist in complex patterns of interactions: global structures that cause the majority of people in the world to be deprived. The duty to help those in need here is based on the backward-looking responsibility for the consequences of our patterns of interaction that resulted in an unfair distribution of benefits and burdens. A further important question in this context is the following: which responsibilities can and should be institutionalised in law? Again this applies to both questions regarding backward-looking responsibility and questions of forward-looking responsibility: when is it appropriate to hold someone legally responsible, that is, liable for his or her actions? And under which circumstances should moral duties become legal duties to aid, to compensate, or to care for a particular person or matter? There is another arguably prior question: of which kinds of entities might responsibility (either in the backward-looking or forward-looking sense) be predicated? Just as rights theorists have had to consider whether, and if so which, collectives can be bearers of rights, we have to investigate 615

4 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 the question as to what kinds of collectives, if any, can count as (moral) agents. Does it make sense to say that a collective as whole can be causally responsible, and even morally blameworthy? Correspondingly, can collectives be bearers of duties, either moral duties or legal liabilities? If this is answered in the affirmative, then some thought must be given to how collective responsibilities might interact with individual responsibility. The question whether individual members of groups can be responsible for actions attributable to the group as a whole, or actions undertaken by other group members, especially those in positions of authority in the group, has been of philosophical interest and great political relevance in the course of the last century (see, for example, May and Hoffman 1991). In short, among the questions a theory of global justice has to answer are the following: i. What kinds of entities can be said to be bearers of duties? ii. How do we determine who bears responsibilities to whom? iii. How can we justify particular prospective or remedial responsibilities and their distribution? iv. What must responsible agents do in specific circumstances? For this special issue of Ethical Perspectives, each article will provide a distinctive perspective on an issue of responsibility in international political philosophy. All explicitly or implicitly touch on all the issues listed above, but each has a distinct focus on one question. The pieces by David Miller and Chandran Kukathas touch on the question of what kind of entities can be held responsible either in the forward-looking or the backward-looking sense. Miller argues that nation-states can be deemed responsible agents, in both a backward-looking and forward-looking sense, and provides a defence of collective responsibility in the case of global poverty. By contrast, Kukathas argues that state responsibility, in a backward-looking sense, is a chimera. Therefore, he argues, it cannot be used to justify restrictions on immigration. David Heyd focuses on the 616

5 INTRODUCTION scope of prospective responsibility, arguing that it cannot be global, and thus suggests that remedial duties with regard to global poverty must be justified either with reference to backward-looking responsibilities or other accounts of forward-looking responsibility. Clare Heyward s article is concerned with the content of responsibility in the specific context of population growth in climate justice. Finally, Rob Jubb assesses the relevance of the contribution principle in two different contexts, contributing to global environmental damage and contributing to global poverty. Like Miller, he is thus concerned with the question of how collective responsibility relates to individuals. In this way, we hope that the special issue as a whole makes a contribution to understanding some aspects of the idea of responsibility in general and to particular questions in international political philosophy. David Miller evaluates the idea of collective responsibility in the context of global justice. Miller distinguishes between outcome responsibility, the responsibility stemming from acting in a way that foreseeably contributes to the outcome that concerns us (629) and remedial responsibility, that is, from having a particular reason to put something at right that needs putting right (629). There are different kinds of reasons for being remedially responsible; one of these reasons is outcome responsibility. We have a particular reason to fight global poverty when we acted in a way that foreseeably led to global poverty. It is not the only concern and it might not be the most important concern in all circumstances, but it is one relevant concern. Outcome responsibility is thus one factor in determining the fair distribution of the costs involved in fighting poverty. Given the impossibility of tracking our individual responsibility for global poverty through the complexities of the international trade system, Miller argues that outcome responsibility for global poverty must be attributed to collectives, especially nation-states, rather than individuals. This move, however, is contested by the intuition that it is unfair to hold someone responsible for something that he or she had no control over since membership in the relevant collectives is not voluntary. Miller claims that 617

6 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 requiring voluntary membership relieves too many of too much of the responsibility for causing global poverty and engages in a fine-grained analysis of preconditions for individual inclusion in collective outcome responsibility as well as collective remedial responsibility. He shows that how we can avoid inclusion in collective outcome responsibility depends both on the kind of group in question and one s role in it. Collective remedial responsibility does not merely rest on outcome responsibility alone, but also on the benefits one receives from being a member of this particular group. Both in the case of outcome responsibility and in the case of benefitting, Miller stresses that we can be caught up in responsibility by merely being unlucky. This is precisely what liberals often object to: we ought not be held responsible for consequences that are not under our control. Given the importance of answering the question of who is remedially responsible for alleviating global poverty, and given that for this we also want an answer to the question of who is responsible for causing global poverty, Miller urges us to engage more with the difficult question of collective responsibility and to develop a better understanding of what it means to be responsible agents within circumstances that are not under our control. Miller s article develops his work on national responsibility (Miller 2007). It has previously been criticised by those who claim that holding a collective responsible is unfair to those members of the collective who neither actively participated in the problematic actions nor voluntarily chose to be members of the collective. Chandran Kukathas, in his argument for open borders, expresses scepticism about the prospect of collective, in particular, state responsibility. Therefore, while he addresses his critique to the recent work of Ryan Pevnick (2011), some of his arguments are also relevant to Miller s general theory. Kukathas notes that immigration restrictions can come in a number of varieties, from restrictions on entry to limiting the opportunities of those who are allowed to enter, for example, to work, to remain indefinitely, or to acquire property in the state s jurisdiction. Open borders thus 618

7 INTRODUCTION means the removal of restrictions of movement and impediments to settlement. Kukathas takes issue with Pevnick s appeal to the idea of a state as a historical collective endeavour as a justification for restricting immigration. For Pevnick, the state is the result of a community s labour and investment, producing valuable public goods for its members. State institutions supporting this process are created, maintained, and passed on to the next generation. The right to self-determination, including the right to exclude others, is based upon this collective production, as the producer of goods, and it is for the community as a whole to determine how its social resources are to be used. Thus Pevnick appeals to a sense of backwardlooking collective responsibility: citizens of a state, through their co-operative labour, are causally responsible for the creation of goods. They are therefore entitled to them and there is no duty to share them with others by allowing immigration (exceptions might be made where the said others are in severe distress). Kukathas challenges Pevnick s view by arguing that the latter s conception of the state is erroneous. A state is not a collective agent over time in the sense needed to predicate responsibility and rights. Kukathas firstly notes an empirical point that many states have not existed for more than a few generations. His more fundamental point is, however, that states are constructions of a small elite, for the interests of that elite. Until very recently, meaningful participation in the development of political institutions was limited and even in modern democracies political decision-making is largely an elite pursuit. States have rarely developed out of the shared concerns of a population, rather than exploitation of those populations by elites. Taxation is a prime example. Rather than Pevnick s account of the state as rising from labour and investment for the production of public goods for all, historically the main purpose of taxation was to fight foreign wars (for the glory of elite members, we might add) and taxation was usually strongly resisted by the majority of the population. It is therefore misleading to speak of the state as a collective project intended to advance shared concerns. As Kukathas brings out in his discussion of the example of the differences between Singapore and Malaysia, decisions 619

8 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 are made by elites, often regardless of popular support. Accordingly, there is no way, contra Pevnick, that the populace must take credit or blame for the course of economic development (666) of those two states. For Kukathas, society, understood as a network of individuals who collaborate and exchange, is the fundamental concept, and it is misleading to think of this as being constituted by, or identical with political boundaries, such as state boundaries. Actions undertaken in a society are typically spontaneous rather than planned and as such, variable and changeable. There is such a thing as society, but there is no such thing as a political community that can be said to be an agent responsible for states of affairs that generate moral entitlements. David Heyd, in contrast to Kukathas, does hold that nation-states can be deemed responsible agents. His definition of responsibility differs somewhat from Miller s. Heyd is interested in prospective responsibility, a kind of forward-looking responsibility. This kind of responsibility is cashed out in terms of accountability. An agent is responsible if he, she, or it can be called to account by others. As such, Heyd identifies three necessary conditions for the ascription of responsibility: capacity, control, and a special relationship or association between the agent(s) being held to account and the agent(s) calling the other(s) to account. The ascription of prospective responsibility is a necessary condition for having duties to act in particular ways, although it does not itself specify those duties Heyd tries to keep the two concepts separate, arguing that the former is weaker and fruitfully vaguer than the latter (683). As might be expected from the grounding of prospective responsibility in the presence of a special relationship, Heyd argues, pace Anthony Duff, that prospective responsibility, and hence global distributive justice, cannot obtain globally. He criticises accounts of global justice derived from contractualism, arguing that the hypothetical contract is used to set out formally the content of the duties of justice in a given community, not to set that boundary. Therefore, he argues, one s community cannot be treated as one of the morally arbitrary factors occluded by a veil of ignorance or 620

9 INTRODUCTION similar device. Community boundaries are set by other factors, in particular, solidarity. However, solidarity is not itself the source of responsibility. Instead, prospective responsibility is created by the contract among the members of the pre-defined group. From this, Heyd concludes that individuals cannot be prospectively responsible to people outside their political community. He goes on to argue that this is also true of states: only where prior solidarity exists between states can there be prospective responsibility. Even where this does obtain, Heyd suggests, it rarely means that the states in question have duties of distributive justice to each other: more common are duties of military assistance and political support. Heyd concludes by considering whether, given its special status as the world s only super-power, the US might be an agent with de facto global prospective responsibility. The three articles outlined above all focus on the question of whether responsibility can be assigned to collectives. While that question is also relevant to the following two articles, these contributions focus more on the content of responsibility that might be assigned to agents. Clare Heyward discusses responsibilities for population growth. In the context of climate change, a growing population is problematic both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation. Mitigation efforts get harder the more people there are with legitimate claims to emissionenabled decent living conditions. Adaptation also becomes harder since a larger population increases vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Suggesting that population growth should be limited in some way is, however, very controversial. Moreover, suggesting this in the context of climate change might be considered as an attempt to shift responsibility to the global South where fertility rates are generally higher, despite the fact that the global South is already disadvantaged both in terms of development and by the impacts of climate change. Despite these difficulties, Heyward argues that discussion about climate justice needs to consider population growth. However, her article demonstrates that in the context of climate change a discussion of population requires not only engaging 621

10 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 in the question of legitimate policies to incentivise smaller families, but also needs to address the other factors that contribute to human impact on global environmental systems, such as affluence and technology. Population growth is undeniably a factor in human impact on environmental systems, but this does not necessarily entail that it must be reduced if manipulating other factors can accommodate it. Heyward argues against a common view in the procreative justice literature, that parents should bear the full costs of their procreative choices. She argues that requiring internalisation of procreative choices cannot be sanctioned in a just society. As internalisation gains plausibility when social resources are at their limit, Heyward argues that there is a duty to take steps to avoid any such situation arising. Therefore, we need to reconsider our understanding of affluence and investigate the full possibilities offered by emission-reducing technology. Heyward argues that before we discuss the individual responsibility of (would be) parents, we need to discuss our collective responsibility for a sustainable culture and life-style that accommodates procreative choice. In particular, she argues that we have a duty to invest in clean technology so that an increased population might be possible without a corresponding rise in net GHG emissions. This does not rule out also supporting non-coercive measures that tend to reduce population growth, like providing better educational and professional opportunities for women or a secure pension system. However, these non-coercive measures can be justified by appeal to social justice as well as environmental justice. Finally, Robert Jubb focuses on one particular form of collective responsibility: responsibility based on contributing to a harmful outcome. While contribution is neither necessary nor sufficient to ground remedial responsibility, there are some cases in which contribution to a collectively caused harm warrants liability for addressing this harm. According to Jubb s contractualist framework, liability ought to be distributed by a scheme to which no one can legitimately object. He distinguishes three different kinds of legitimate objections to liability: (i) the costs incurred by liability are so high as to threaten agency, (ii) the costs of avoiding liability 622

11 INTRODUCTION are so high as to threaten agency, and (iii) avoiding liability involves unreasonably high social costs in the sense of creating a climate hostile to agency. For Jubb, there is a very strong link between causal responsibility, liability, and agency. In the context of liability based on contribution, he therefore argues that such liability only applies in cases where there is (i) a significant harm, (ii) the option to contribute and to what extent is under the control of the individual contributors, and (iii) avoiding contribution is not unreasonably costly in terms of agency. Furthermore, given that the reason for being held liable is contribution, contribution also ought to inform the metric of liability. An example for collectively caused harms that are well understood in terms of contribution is pollution: (i) the collective harm is such that it ought to be avoided and redressed, (ii) all polluters know that their pollution increases the danger of seriously harming the environment, especially when others pollute too, and has alternative ways to act, and (iii) given the multiple possible ways of avoiding pollution, abstaining from polluting action does not restrict agency in a problematic way. Since polluters are thus in a position to control the extent of their pollution, they ought to be held liable and, more precisely, liable in proportion to their contribution to the overall pollution. Contrary to the claims of some writers on global justice (e.g. Barry 2005; Pogge 2002; Young 2006), Jubb argues that global poverty is not to be understood in terms of contribution. While the harm is significant and ought to be addressed, it is very difficult to control one s contribution to global poverty because of its entanglement with complex social institutions. Furthermore, costs of avoiding contributing to global poverty are crippling in terms of agency because it would require removing oneself from these complex social institutions. Finally, given the entanglement with complex power relations, actual contribution might not be the most important criterion for distributing the costs of liability in cases of global justice. These forms of collective action, therefore, ought to be grounded in a different understanding of collective responsibility and the corresponding liabilities ought to be distributed according to a rationale fitting this understanding. 623

12 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES DECEMBER 2012 Taken together, these articles highlight some of the key issues in understanding the concept of responsibility and its application to important questions of global justice. Alexa Zellentin, Clare Heyward and Lukas Meyer Guest Editors 1 WORKS CITED Baer, Paul, Tom Athanasiou, et al The Greenhouse Development Rights Framwork: The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation. Barry, Christian Understanding and Evaluating the Contribution Model. In Real World Justice. Edited by Thomas Pogge and Andreas Follesdal, Dordrecht: Springer. Caney, Simon Justice Beyond Borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duff, Anthony Responsibility. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosphy. Edited by Edward Craig, London: Routledge. Honoré, Tony Responsibility and Fault. Oxford: Hart. Maslin, Mark Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. May, Larry and Stacey Hoffman Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Meyer, Lukas and Dominic Roser Climate Justice and Historical Emissions. Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy 13: Miller, David National Responsibility and Global Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Myers, Norman Environmental Refugees: A Growing Phenomenon of the 21 st Century. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 357/1420: O Neill, Onora Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pevnick, Roland Immigration and the Constraints of Justice: Between Open Borders and Absolute Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pogge, Thomas World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms. Cambridge: Polity. Singer, Peter Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: Waldron, Jeremy Superseding Historic Injustice. Ethics 103: Young, Iris Marion Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model. Social Philosophy and Policy 23:

13 INTRODUCTION NOTES 1. We would like to thank all participants at the workshop Responsibility in International Political Philosophy, held at the University of Graz (September 20-22, 2010), for a very stimulating discussion on various aspects of responsibility and global justice. We are very grateful to the Mayor s Office of the City of Graz, the State of Styria, Department of Science and Research, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research, the Dean of Arts and Humanities and the Vice-Rector of Research and Junior Researchers Promotion, both of the University of Graz, for funding the workshop. Finally, we would like to thank all those who reviewed the articles for this special issue. 625