Global Issues Series General Editor: Jim Whitman This exciting new series encompasses three principal themes: the interaction of human and natural systems; cooperation and conflict; and the enactment of values. The series as a whole places an emphasis on the examination of complex systems and causal relations in political decision-making; problems of knowledge; authority, control and accountability in issues of scale; and the reconciliation of conflicting values and competing claims. Throughout the series the concentration is on an integration of existing disciplines towards the clarification of political possibility as well as impending crises. 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 Global Issues Series Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–79483–4 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England 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 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–97129–9 hardback ISBN 1–4039–1720–5 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 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 Antony Rowe Ltd,Chippenham and Eastbourne 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.