Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?: Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (Global Issues)

255 Pages·2004·1.19 MB·English

by  Toni Erskine

Global Issues Series
General Editor: Jim Whitman
This exciting new series encompasses three principal themes: the interaction of
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Titles include:
Roy Carr-Hill and John Lintott
CONSUMPTION, JOBS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
A Fourth Way?
Malcolm Dando
PREVENTING BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
The Failure of American Leadership
Toni Erskine (editor)
CAN INSTITUTIONS HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES?
Collective Moral Agency and International Relations
Brendan Gleeson and Nicholas Low (editors)
GOVERNING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
Global Problems, Ethics and Democracy
Roger Jeffery and Bhaskar Vira (editors)
CONFLICT AND COOPERATION IN PARTICIPATORY NATURAL RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
Ho-Won Jeong (editor)
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES
Institutions and Procedures
APPROACHES TO PEACEBUILDING
W. Andy Knight
A CHANGING UNITED NATIONS
Multilateral Evolution and the Quest for Global Governance
W. Andy Knight (editor)
ADAPTING THE UNITED NATIONS TO A POSTMODERN ERA
Lessons Learned
Kelley Lee
HEALTH IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION (editor)
Towards Global Governance
GLOBALIZATION AND HEALTH
An Introduction
Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson (editors)
MAKING URBAN TRANSPORT SUSTAINABLE
Graham S. Pearson
THE UNSCOM SAGA
Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-Proliferation
Andrew T. Price-Smith (editor)
PLAGUES AND POLITICS
Infectious Disease and International Policy
Michael Pugh (editor)
REGENERATION OF WAR-TORN SOCIETIES
Bhaskar Vira and Roger Jeffery (editors)
ANALYTICAL ISSUES IN PARTICIPATORY NATURAL RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
Simon M. Whitby
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST CROPS
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Can Institutions Have
Responsibilities?
Collective Moral Agency and
International Relations
Edited by
Toni Erskine
Lecturer in International Politics,
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Editorial matter,selection and introduction
© Toni Erskine 2003
Chapter 2,Chapters 4–7,Chapters 9–12
© Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003
Chapters 1,3 and 8 © The Carnegie Council 2001
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Can institutions have responsibilities?:collective moral agency and
international relations/edited by Toni Erskine.
p.cm.– (Global issues series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–333–97129–9 (cloth)
1.International organization – Moral and ethical aspects.
2.International relations – Moral and ethical aspects.3.Responsibility.
I.Erskine,Toni,1969– II.Global issues series (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
JZ1318.C358 2003
172(cid:1).4—dc21 2003046939
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction
Making Sense of ‘Responsibility’ in International
Relations: Key Questions and Concepts 1
Toni Erskine
Part I Identifying Moral Agents: States, Governments,
and ‘International Society’
1 Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents:
The Case of States and ‘Quasi-States’ 19
Toni Erskine
2 Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Representing
the State 41
David Runciman
3 Moral Agency and International Society: Reflections on
Norms, the UN, the Gulf War, and the Kosovo Campaign 51
Chris Brown
Part II Obstacles and Alternative Questions
4 Collective Moral Agency and the Political Process 69
Frances V. Harbour
5 Constitutive Theory and Moral Accountability:
Individuals, Institutions, and Dispersed Practices 84
Mervyn Frost
6 When Agents Cannot Act: International Institutions
as ‘Moral Patients’ 100
Cornelia Navari
v
vi Contents
Part III Hard Cases: Assigning Duties
7 NATO and the Individual Soldier as Moral Agents
with Reciprocal Duties: Imbalance in the Kosovo Campaign 119
Paul Cornish and Frances V. Harbour
8 The Anti-Sweatshop Movement: Constructing
Corporate Moral Agency in the Global Apparel Industry 138
Rebecca DeWinter
Part IV Hard Cases: Apportioning Blame
9 The Responsibility of Collective External Bystanders in
Cases of Genocide: The French in Rwanda 159
Daniela Kroslak
10 The United Nations and the Fall of Srebrenica:
Meaningful Responsibility and International Society 183
Anthony Lang, Jr.
Part V Conclusions
11 On ‘Good Global Governance’, Institutional Design,
and the Practices of Moral Agency 207
Nicholas Rengger
12 Global Justice: Aims, Arrangements, and Responsibilities 218
Christian Barry
Index 238
Notes on Contributors
Christian Barryis editor of Ethics & International Affairsand directs the
programme on Justice and the World Economy at the Carnegie Council
on Ethics and International Affairs. He has been a contributing author
to UNDP’s Human Development Reportfor the past three years. His recent
articles include ‘The Ethical Assessment of Technological Change: An
Overview of the Issues, Journal of Human Development(2001), ‘Access to
Medicines and the Rhetoric of Responsibility’ (with Kate Raworth),
Ethics & International Affairs (2002) and ‘Redistribution’, Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy(2003).
Chris Brown is Professor of International Relations at the London
School of Economics. He is author of International Relations Theory: New
Normative Approaches(1992),Understanding International Relations(1997;
2nd ed. 2001) Sovereignty, Rights and Justice(2002) and editor of Political
Restructuring In Europe: Ethical Perspectives(1994) and, (with Terry Nardin
and N. J. Rengger) International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from
the Greeks to the First World War(2002).
Paul Cornish is Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s
College, University of London. He was previously Newton Sheehy
Lecturer in International Relations at the Centre for International
Studies, University of Cambridge and NATO Research Fellow 2000–02.
His publications include The Arms Trade and Europe (1995), British
Military Planning for the Defence of Germany, 1945–50(1996),Controlling
the Arms Trade: the West versus the Rest (1996), and Partnership in Crisis:
the US, Europe and the Fall and Rise of NATO(1997).
Rebecca DeWinter is a PhD candidate at the American University’s
School of International Service in Washington, DC, where her two areas
of specialization are International Political Economy and Ethics and
International Affairs. She was formerly the Programme Associate to
Amnesty International USA’s Human Rights and the Environment
Programme.
Toni Erskinetook up the position of Lecturer in International Politics at
the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 2002. Until that time, she was
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre of International
Studies, University of Cambridge. Her ongoing British Academy
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
Postdoctoral project focuses on the theoretical and practical implica-
tions for international relations of extending the concept of moral
agency from individuals to formal organizations. She is associate editor
of the journal International Relations and author of Embedded
Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of Dislocated
Communities(forthcoming).
Mervyn Frostis Professor at the London Centre of International Relations
within the War Studies Department at King’s College, University of
London. Prior to this he was Professor of International Relations at the
University of Kent at Canterbury and Professor of Politics and Head of
Department at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa. He was
President of the South African Political Science Association from 1992–94.
He is author of Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations(1986),
Ethics in International Relations (1996), and Constituting Human Rights:
Global Civil Society and the Society of Democratic States(2002).
Frances Harbour is Associate Professor of Government and
International Affairs at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. She
is the author of Thinking About International Ethics: Moral Theory and
Cases from American Foreign Policy (1998) and has published articles in
such journals as Armed Forces and Society, Ethics & International Affairs,
and the Journal of Religious Ethics. She is past-president of the
International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association and
currently serves as civilian representative and treasurer on the governing
board of the Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics.
Daniela Kroslak has recently received a PhD from the University of
Wales, Aberystwyth. She spent six months at the Norwegian Institute of
International Affairs (NUPI) in 2002 where she was employed as a
researcher on the programme Training for Peace. Her publications
include (with Tim Dunne) ‘Genocide: Knowing what it is that we want
to remember, or forget, or forgive’, International Journal of Human Rights
(2000), and (with Alex Bellamy) ‘The Dawning of a Solidarist Era? The
NATO Intervention in Kosovo’, Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict
(2001). She now works for UNFPA in Rwanda.
Anthony F. Lang, Jr teaches Political Science at Albright College in
Reading, PA. He has recently published a book on the ethics of humani-
tarian intervention: Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention
(2002). His current research focuses on global protest movements, the
political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, and the intersection of ethics
and law in the use of military force.
Notes on Contributors ix
Cornelia Navari is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political
Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham. She is
author of Internationalism and the State in the 20th Century (2000); and
editor of British Politics in the Spirit of the Age: Political Concepts in Action
(1996),Chatham House and British Foreign Policy during the Interwar Period
(1994) and The Condition of States(1991).
Nicholas Rengger is Professor of Political Theory and International
Relations at St Andrews University in Scotland. His most recent book is
International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to
the First World War, co-edited with Chris Brown and Terry Nardin (2002).
He is currently writing a book on two moral sensibilities and their
implications for politics and international relations.
David Runciman is University Lecturer in Political Theory in the
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
He is author of Pluralism and the Personality of the State(1997), which is
about the history and the theory of the state’s relationship as an associ-
ation to other kinds of associations. He has also published articles on
this and similar themes, relating to the overall question of the state’s
identity as an agent in its own right.