Citizens’ Culpability and Responsibility for States’ Actions

Abstract

This chapter returns to the outstanding issue of whether citizens might have responsibility for what their states do in a weaker form than culpability. That is to say, even if they are not members of the collective agent that is the state, they might nonetheless come to have responsibilities for what it does. In the first part of the chapter, the focus is on whether weak collective agency can support collective culpability, and it is argued, through a thought experiment in three variations, that it cannot. In the second part of the chapter, the focus is on alternatives to culpability, including complicity, association, benefit, privilege, and assistance. Difficulties with some of these are noted, but it is argued that there may yet be responsibilities from several of these sources, particular when there are ‘culpability shortfalls’.

Collective responsibility for climate change

“…Likewise, Stilz (2011) argues that the citizens of democratic states can share liability for what their state does. While the conceptualization of a state that includes its citizens has been the dominant model, Lawford‐Smith (2019) argues that states are better understood as citizen‐exclusive collective moral agents. Very broadly, her argument identifies the departments and agencies of the state as the loci of its agency, rather than the voters.…”

“…Pasternak (2013) argues that if industrialized states expressed a readiness to accept a duty to fund compensation and support mitigation schemes in poorer states, the funds required would likely be paid by the citizens of the industrialized states through higher taxes or a reduced provision of public goods and services. Lawford‐Smith (2019) denies that moral responsibility is to be distributed to ordinary citizens in democratic states, or that they are culpable for their state's harmful or unjust policies. Her claim is not that citizens can excuse themselves from any culpability by voting or protesting against a certain policy; instead, she argues that citizens are almost never morally implicated in their state's actions.…”

Are citizens culpable for state action?

“…Instead, Lawford-Smith claims that “when the democratic state acts, it does not act in the citizenry's name, at least not if that means the citizenry is any part of what acts. Citizens are rarely, if ever, implicated in their states’ actions” (Lawford-Smith 2019, 4–5).…”

“…These are task-responsibilities : forward-looking duties to repair an injury. Reasons for assigning task-responsibilities might be capacity (members are in a unique position to address the situation); benefit (members benefit from their state and have reason to bear the burdens of repairing its wrongs); or community (members stand in an associative relation to the state such that they are best placed to remedy harms it has caused) (Miller 2007; Collins 2016; Lawford-Smith 2019). Accounts of member-responsibility can be distinguished along these two dimensions, as the chart below illustrates.…”

“…My argument is controversial: many theorists hold that duties of accountability apply only to high-level state policymakers (Lawford-Smith 2019; Pasternak 2021; Fleming 2020). A few other scholars have held that ordinary citizens share blame for state wrongs (Beerbohm 2012; Jaspers 2009; Zakaras 2018).…”