International Ethics

This Article seeks to develop a frame of reference for comprehending legitimacy structures in emerging global economic governance regimes. To that end, it provides, in contradistinction from positivist and pragmatist approaches, an alternative normative justificatory framework for soft law. As its very name suggests, soft law is a law-like phenomenon, distinct from classical notions of law, yet no less significant, and hence worthy of receiving systematic moral analysis. It is therefore reasonable to draw upon philosophy of law as an intellectual resource for undertaking such a conceptual endeavor. Accordingly, this Article examines philosophical justifications for evolving soft law syndicates that profess to impose obligations on business enterprises and other participants dealing with human rights and sustainability matters. The Article concludes that a naturalistic cosmopolitan jurisprudence that embraces the intrinsic value of rule of law and human rights provides a vital intell...

The important questions in politics are of probability, not possibility. What would the plausible and probable consequences of a particular intervention have been? What would have had to differ in order for successful intervention to result? Only an anti-political ethical framework – a kind of crude deontology – could find overriding significance in the mere possibility that lives could have been saved.

Dealing with refugees is one of the most contested political issues in Australia. We examine how media images of asylum seekers have framed ensuing debates during two crucial periods over the past decade. By conducting a content analysis of newspaper front pages we demonstrate that asylum seekers have primarily been represented as medium or large groups and through a focus on
boats. We argue that this visual framing, and in particular the relative absence of images that depict individual asylum seekers with recognisable facial features, associates refugees not with a humanitarian challenge, but with threats to sovereignty and security. These dehumanising visual patterns reinforce a politics of fear that explains why refugees are publicly framed as people whose plight, dire as it is, nevertheless does not generate a compassionate political response.

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"Linking security and ethics is not a simple matter. Debates about security have rarely been framed in explicitly ethical or moral terms, and it is hard to point to any self-consciously ethical theory of security as such, in contrast to the role that the just war tradition performs for studies of war and peace, for example. This does not mean, however, that ethics are foreign to questions of security; they are in fact central to them, however submerged or disavowed.  Every vision and practice of security has an ethic: an ideal of the good and the right, even if it is buried in a story about the facts. Every vision of security poses an ideal vision of human nature, societal priority, and international order, even if they state them as fixed, a-historical givens. This is one vision of the ethical, one that is all too often collapsed into ontology, into claims about what is true, what exists, and what cannot exist. Yet another vision of the ethical, which we could call ‘critical’, seeks to make ethical judgements about ethical visions. It refuses to collapse ethics into ontology, to reduce ethics to timeless visions of what is or to a set of fixed and rigid principles.  It does not eschew principles, but subjects them to a test of their effects and implementation, to the practices they generate and the results—in terms of security or insecurity—that they produce. However a serious obstacle is posed by the way in which the idea of security itself shapes the terrain upon which we can think and achieve the ethical. The historical terms upon which we have understood and conceptualised security—and with it, political and moral community—constrain the very basis upon which we can achieve anything ‘ethical’ with security. In the wake of recent reformulations that have sought to ‘broaden’ or ‘deepen’ security to new threats or new objects of concern, powerful questions press in: Who or what is the object of security concern? How is security defined? What practices, methods and goods does security name, and how do we evaluate them? And could security, by overriding other goods that societies deem to be of value, unnecessarily constrain the worlds we can make under the name of the ethical? In short, does security have ethical worth at all?"

One type of change that has lurked at the edges of scholarly discussions of international politics—often assumed, invoked, and alluded to, but rarely interrogated—is learning. Learning entails a very particular type of change. It is deliberate, internal, transformative, and peaceful (in the sense of being uncoerced). In this article, I ask whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can learn in a way that is comparable to the paradigmatic learning of individual human beings. In addressing this question, I take three steps. First, I explore references to corporate entities “learning” within the discipline of International Relations (IR) and ask whether what is being proposed is, in fact, genuine learning by the organizations themselves. Second, I attempt to construct a robust account of institutional learning that departs from these conceptions and acknowledges instead the self-reflection and structural transformation that I argue learning at the corporate level requires. Third, for the purpose of illustration, I turn briefly to the UN following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the slaughter of more than eight thousand men and boys outside Srebrenica in 1995 to identify examples of each stage of institutional learning. Finally, I offer three provisional claims about my proposed conception of institutional learning that warrant attention in future work. Namely, I suggest that institutional learning: (1) cannot be equated with moral progress; (2) is possible despite formal organizations being incapable of emotional responses such as shame or regret; and, perhaps most controversially, (3) can occur at the level of the IGO without prior or parallel learning taking place at the level of the state or individual human actor.

In the face of the current proliferation of existential threats – the risk of nuclear war, anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and (arguably) disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence – it is imperative that Australia embrace the notion of shared responsibility in international politics. Individual states have limited capacities to effectively tackle such large-scale, complex emergencies on their own. Highlighting the moral implications of the philosophical notion of joint action, this commentary makes the case for a particular type of responsibility, which can only be discharged when states deliberate and coordinate their actions. Moreover, it explores what this notion of shared responsibility means for Australia – and its international relationships – with respect to responding to climate chaos and COVID-19. 

Even though Australia, acting on its own, can neither significantly mitigate climate change nor halt the current global pandemic, it nevertheless has demanding moral responsibilities to respond to both. This is because the capacities necessary to affect meaningful change can be created through collaboration with other institutional agents. In the absence of intergovernmental organizations able to respond effectively to such crises, Australia has shared responsibilities to contribute to establishing, and then acting as part of, informal, purpose-driven, climate change and COVID-19 ‘coalitions of the obligated’.

Frequently inspired by the spectre of existential risk, Australian IR scholars have made – and continue to make – a crucial contribution to the evolution of normative IR theory.  In defending this position, this article takes three steps.  First, it outlines key catalysts that prompted the emergence of this sub-field as a distinct and self-aware area of study approximately forty years ago and refines the story of its genesis by recognising pioneering Australian contributions.  Second, it turns to the previous generation of Australian IR to explore the work of two prominent scholars – and ‘neglected antecedents’ – who both prefigured and helped to establish the intellectual context for normative IR theory.  Specifically, it focuses on the scholarship of Coral Bell and Hedley Bull and maintains that the classical approach and interpretive methodology that their work exemplified and fostered was particularly conducive to the subsequent development of a sub-field focused on questions of international ethics.  Finally, this article contemplates the future of normative IR theory in Australia by highlighting its current flourishing, acknowledging the seemingly intractable practical challenges that it must address, and proposing that it might better confront them by turning to a hitherto overlooked Australian ethical perspective.

Hannah Arendt's fierce critique of sovereignty, along with her excavation of Greek agonism, has gained much traction among critical theorists of international politics who revisit the basic assumptions of conventional international theories, such as state sovereignty and power as domination. This paper engages with an increasingly popular stream within such critical international studies that appropriates Arendt's agonism to envision a form of a global public acting in concert. I argue that Arendt's thoughts cannot be reduced to a radical vision of agonistic cosmo-politics. Rather, her thinking suggests that political actors appreciate and care for their public worlds while remaining alert to institutional ossification. Her appreciation of the constitutional state confirms that state agency is an important element of her thoughts. By examining the vicissitudes of publicity found in Arendt's thinking and their reflexive effect on inter-polity relations, the article elucidates the grounds of her international agonism and brings home a form of international politics where states pursuing the domestic goal of greatness coexist and cooperate. Thus, the study suggests that critical scholars of radical agonism miss the important implications of an "institutional" Arendt for international politics.

In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields — International Relations and political philosophy — and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism,
showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions
to the vibrant global justice debates.

While robots and automata have traditionally belonged to the realm of fiction, they are rapidly becoming an issue for the disarmament community. On the one hand, some experts believe that robots programmed to adhere to international humanitarian law (IHL) will be able to act more ethically than human beings on the battlefield. On the other hand, several commentators have disputed this claim, contending that the use of robots – or autonomous weapon systems (AWSs) – will lower the threshold to use violent force, and that such machines will be unable to discriminate between soldiers and civilians. Accordingly, this (essentially utilitarian) discussion of the consequences the deployment of AWSs is likely to have, remains locked in a word-against-word argument. Rather than focusing on the direct humanitarian effects of AWSs, people calling for a pre-emptive ban should point to the issue of moral agency, and the relationship between AWSs and human beings. Machine Autonomy and the Uncanny is an attempt at separating the question of ‘harm’ from questions pertaining to ‘the harmer’. The use of AWSs poses grave problems for the doctrine of the moral equality of soldiers, for the dignity of all parties involved, and for both legal and moral responsibility.

Deontological international ethics is a tradition of internaitonal ethics that emphasizes the duties of international actors towards relevant Others in their mutual interactions.  This paper briefly traces some of the evolutionary history of this ethical tradition, and examines its application in the areas of nuclear weapons and global economic justice.

The article uncovers factors that point towards continuing peaceful development in the Arctic. Contrast to the grim visions of an Arctic Race to the resources, there is a process where international law, UN conventions, environmental regimes and scientific guidelines are followed. Consequently, the main security challenges in the Arctic are not related to traditional interstate security questions. Instead of issues like maritime delimitation or cold water military capacities we should be more concerned about human and environmental security. To this end, the article analyses the local dilemma between traditional means of livelihood and modern hydrocarbon industry, global environmental impacts of glacier melting, and moral issues related to the utilization of the new Arctic oil and gas resources (the so-called Arctic paradox).

This book offers an innovative interdisciplinary approach that elucidates the importance of virtue ethics to help better understand the role of leadership in international organizations. The authors use a combination of theoretical and conceptual narratives, as well as case studies to highlight both the advantages and weaknesses that the angle of virtue ethics offers. This is a particularly important step in times of uncertainty or crisis when the demand for leadership becomes more urgent yet more daunting. In this sense, this volume oscillates between critique and hope, since it provides a plausible, rather than a purely abstract, approach to the conceptualization and concretization of ethical leadership.

For anti-cosmopolitan critics, cosmopolitanism is equated with the universalisation of a particular, liberal, account of justice and is therefore problematic for a number of reasons. The liberal principle 'do no harm' principle – and the cosmopolitan principle of humanitari-anism, can be used to correct the depiction of cosmopolitanism as hostile to 'pluralism', to identify the universalism that is latent or undeveloped in much 'anti-cosmopolitanism', and to identify further means of reconciling these positions. A cosmopolitan harm principle argues that the absence of a universal conception of justice should not provide an obstacle to the recognition of an obligation to limit transboundary harms.

It is widely recognised that the study of emotions provides significant and still emerging potentials for the scholarship and practice of world politics.  But having shown that emotions matter, international relations research is turning to more carefully appreciate exactly how emotions matter and possess important political capacities.  Identifying this broad debate as a recurring thread through the symposium as well as in emerging research, this essay focuses on the productive nature and transformative potentials of emotion.  Specifically, the essay reflects on the extent to which emotions can bring the ‘messy’ parts of world politics to light and, in turn, enable us to rethink, perceive of, and feel for them anew.  Key here are bodies – foremost, suffering bodies – and the hierarchical, exclusionary structures and histories that underpin, yet also confound, the appearance of certain bodies in international relations.  The essay forwards a two-part argument.  First, I argue that the links between emotions and bodies are crucial to apprehending the political roles and capacities of emotions.  Second, and somewhat contrary to the current call to focus specifically on bodies, I stress the need to go beyond the body.  Specifically, I argue that before bodies can be situated at the forefront of politics we need to appreciate the emotional politics of bodies themselves.  Equally important, therefore, are the processes of materialisation – of representation and discourse – that condition emotions and shape ways of perceiving and feeling for suffering.  To conclude, I discuss the implications of this paradox and point to how the political mediation of emotion – and how we analyse and write of this mediation – can both complement and contest core concepts and practices through which international relations is conducted, such as sovereignty, statehood, hierarchy and power.  Appreciating the potentials of emotions and affective energies of bodies and mediating bodies in this way makes but can also unmake and remake world politics.

In this article, I deconstruct the concept of legitimacy (notably in the form elaborated by Max Weber) by emphasising its conceptual complicity with the notion of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Derrida's critique of Austin's theory of performativity, I elaborate another, non-ontological 'concept' of legitimacy, located before and beyond sociological methodology, International Relations theory, and performative ontologies of power. This legitimation-to-come signifies the structural fallibility and pervertibility of the performative, and instantiates the archi-originary force of an unconditional resistance, conditioning both the position and the deconstruction of ontologies of sovereign ipseity (ipsocracy). Pursuing the efforts of Cynthia Weber and Rob Walker, I attempt to sketch the implications of this post-performative legitimacy with respect to the protocols of legitimation of International Relations theory and sociological methodologies, through an analysis of their persistent ontological presuppositions.

Conventional wisdom holds that realists support the recourse to war more than just war theorists. I argue that the opposite is true: just war theory produces a more bellicose orientation than realism. Although the two traditions share a set of assumptions about the international system, as well as several underlying logics, the just war tradition's concern with justice leads it to permit many more kinds of war than realism. Thus, if just war theorists wish to restrain violence, they must approach the possibility of achieving justice through war with more skepticism.

Multinationals have driven the rapid economic expansion of India at a breathtaking pace. At the same time, India's infrastructure has not kept up with demand, the poor are not able to tap into the economic influx, and multinationals have raised locals concerns on what ethical practices should be driven within the country. India's situation is different from past "outsourcing activity" with the rise of globalization and makes the questions bigger. How should multinationals conduct business within India and what does an ethical framework look like specifically within India and in light of the changes caused by globalization?

This paper will look at a proposal for an ethical framework for multinationals doing business in India and will propose a need to inquire and put in place a globalization ethic that will serve today's new business climate. Beyond the normative business ethics of utilitarianism and Kant's theory of the categorical imperative the ethical model of virtue ethics will be applied through the lens of a vocational metaethic. The new ethical framework will also apply Indian tradition in the context of present and past reflection to strive for Justice in the new expansion of India. An additional framework of the ethical model is globalization to ensure that business strives forward but at the same time considers the realities of the market situation. To complete the ethical model the paper analyzes key stakeholders in Indian business, beyond the traditional stakeholders, to give multinationals a framework to weave within the fabric of their organization and help put in place policies and process that reflect the ethical model. The fictional company Transporter, a creator and manufacture of cell phones, provides a "case study" of how the ethical model can take shape within a multinational complex situation in doing business in India.

Despite the widespread acceptance of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), the latter still faces some challenges. First, China’s rise is as rampant as opaque and thus this Chinese foreign policy agenda has been met with suspicion due to its lack of detailed content. Second, for some countries, the BRI is essentially a new example of colonialism through which China is paving its way to access energy sources and markets both necessary to keep fueling its spectacular economic growth. Third, changes in political leadership in some of the countries along the Belt have turned the tables against Chinese investment accusing the latter of buying out countries. In turn, this jeopardizes the economic sustainability of Chinese investment.
In this chapter, I suggest two ways in which China can try to change and correct these critical perceptions on the BRI. I propose that the cultural exchange and people-to-people ties side of the project is given more prominence. However, and by means of a comparison with the now forgotten Colombo Plan as well as the Australian New Colombo Plan, I advocate that China should avoid a type of one-way cultural exchange in which it tells other countries about itself without showing deep and sustained cultural interest in the “Other”. I also suggest that if China wants to exercise a distinctive style of normative leadership it ought to develop the philosophy and values of its BRI. Because there are important resources in Chinese thinking to ground this claim, I resort to the work of Yan Xuetong who emphasizes that a moral leader converts the hearts of others rather than winning them by different power resources.
Altogether, these claims promise to create a more sustainable and appealing cultural and normative vision of the New Silk Road.

The study of emotion has become a steadily growing field in international relations and international political sociology. This essay adds to the field through a further empirical examination of the political roles emotions can play. Specifically, the essay questions how emotions were implicated in the construction of transnational solidarity—and the associated humanitarian actions—following an event of pivotal global importance: the Asian tsunami disaster of December 2004. To this end, I focus on the emotional dimensions of dominant media tsunami imagery and examine how emotions helped to produce the humanitarian meanings and ideologies on which the subsequent solidarity and humanitarian actions were based. Analyzing photographs in the New York Times, the essay demonstrates that the dominant tsunami imagery helped to evoke solidarity and garner aid. It did so, at least in part, through mobilizing stereotypical and deeply colonial representations of developing world disaster that are suggestive of a “politics of pity.” In this way, the essay contributes both an empirical study of emotions in world politics and an examination of the linkages between emotions and contemporary humanitarianism.

Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which a fuller attention to suffering in the tradition of the early Frankfurt School might valuably inform international political thought. Recent poststructural writing argues that trauma is silenced to prevent it disrupting narratives of order and ...

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field of Information Ethics is both unattainable and unwarranted. The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a worldview remains constantly in flux due to, what Luciano Floridi terms, ‘philosophical naturalism’. As such, a broadening understanding of the field will only serve to further collapse categorization. The following paper will outline, using a discourse analysis methodology, how the nature of the field of Information Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily defy classification. The assumptions behind the current classifications of the field will be questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception of the field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Floridi, this paper will explicate how any such attempt to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always remain incomplete.

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

How do images influence our moral and political obligation to assist people in need?  The purpose of our chapter is to address this question.  We do not pretend that we are able come up with definitive answers to the complex issues at stake.  But we highlight two points that are important for understanding the linkages between images of humanitarian crises and the subsequent practice of providing humanitarian aid.  First, we draw attention to the pivotal role played by the intensely emotional nature of photographs of humanitarian crises.  Second, we show how the increasingly global circulation of images leads to changes in humanitarian space.  If a crisis becomes visualized in media networks then there is also a chance for a humanitarian response to gain momentum.  We thus agree with Don Hubert and Cynthia Brassar-Bourdreau that humanitarian space is – contrary to widely held pessimistic opinions – not necessarily shrinking. There is little evidence that the so-called compassion fatigue syndrome is as widespread as commonly assumed.  People often give generously when asked for help, as was amply demonstrated in the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami.  But there is always power, interest and politics in all visualisations of humanitarian crises.  We draw attention to the need to be aware of the ensuing ethical dilemmas.

""Health worker migration, commonly called 'medical brain drain', refers to the mass migration of trained and skilled health professionals (doctors, nurses, midwives) from low-income to high-income countries. This is currently leaving a significant number of poor countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, with critical staff shortages in the health care sector. A broad consensus exists that where medical brain drain exacerbates such shortages, it is unethical, and this review presents the
main arguments underpinning this view. Notwithstanding the general agreement, which policies are justifiable on ethical grounds to tackle brain drain and how to go best about implementing them remains controversial. The review offers a discussion of the specific ethical issues that have to be taken into account when deciding which policy measures to prioritise and suggests a strategy of policy implementation to address medical brain drain as a matter of urgency.""

In this text, I discuss Jacques Derrida's late writings on the paradoxical complicity and reciprocal resistance between psychoanalysis and political theory with respect to socio-political notions such as sovereignty and legitimacy. Through an analysis of violence, ipseity, and self-difference in those disciplines, I sketch a methodological problematisation of theory and disciplinarity beyond power and beyond performativity. I try to open up the possibility for another thinking of legitimacy, before and beyond sovereign ipseity; in this I follow but also try to exceed the protocols of legitimation of political theory and psychoanalysis. I strive to be, as Derrida says, 'faithful-unfaithful' to their contradictory injunctions.

I wrote this text in 2015 as a preface to my PhD Thesis, 'The Violence of Legitimacy: Democracy, Power, Antagonism', but ended up not including it in the final version. This preface was initially meant as a meditation on disciplinarity, and as a justification for the transdisciplinary character of my study.

Der Beitrag diskutiert unter Bezugnahme auf die internationale Schutzverantwortung die Rolle kontrafaktischen Denkens. Dabei werden empirisch-analytische und normative IB-Forschung auf jeweils unterschiedliche Weise ins Verhältnis gesetzt:
(1) Kontrafaktisches Denken ist ein wichtiges Instrument der Operationalisierung internationaler Normen und des Völkerrechts. Kriterien wie die Ernsthaftigkeit einer Bedrohung oder die Alternativlosigkeit gewaltsamer Mittel zu deren Abwehr implizieren kontrafaktische Überlegungen. Empirische Studien können der Plausibilität solcher Überlegungen nachgehen, während normative Studien ethische Implikationen herausarbeiten (vgl. Ohba 2013).
(2) Sogenannte Miracle-World-Counterfactuals (Lebow 2000, 2010) können uneingestandene normative Dispositionen zum Vorschein bringen, die wiederum handlungsleitend sein können. Hätten beispielsweise westliche Staaten im Sudankonflikt interveniert, wenn dort die Nachfahren europäischer Siedler, und nicht afrikanische Stämme, bedroht worden wären? Auf dem Wege des Experiments oder der Umfrage kann empirisch die Verbreitung solcher Dispositionen erforscht werden.
(3) Kontrafaktisches Denken, als rekonstruierendes Analyseverfahren (Fearon 1991; Levy 2008; Harvey 2011), kann, mitunter besser als konventionelle Methoden, Fragen der Motivierung und Verantwortung politischen Handelns klären. Hätte sich beispielsweise die Bundesregierung abseits wichtiger Landtagswahlen auch bzgl. der Libyen-Resolution 1973 enthalten? (vgl. Hansel/Oppermann 2014) Normativ stellt sich hier die Frage nach den Voraussetzungen ethischen Handelns (etwa in welchem Zusammenhang Wahlkalküle unethisch sind?)

This paper presents and partly argues for a non-ideal theoretic approach to the ethics of humanitarian intervention, focusing particularly on the cases of Rwanda and Kosovo.  Such an approach, it is argued, involves empirically scrutinizing two ideal-theoretic assumptions that dominate the philosophical literature on humanitarian intervention.  First, in states where humanitarian intervention is being considered, there are two easily identified groups: ‘bad guys’ committing human rights abuses; and innocents who are being targeted.  Second, external to the target state in question there are suitably qualified ‘good guys’ –prospective interveners who possess both the power and moral integrity to carry out a successful humanitarian intervention. The guiding idea behind the non-ideal approach defended here is that if the two ideal assumptions look to be badly mistaken when measured against the available evidence, then it is highly unlikely that the relevant intervention is (or would be) morally justified.

In an interdependent world of overlapping political memberships and identities, states and democratic citizens face difficult choices in responding to large-scale migration and the related question of who ought to have access to citizenship. In an influential attempt to provide a normative framework for a more just global order, The Law of Peoples, political philosopher John Rawls is curiously silent regarding what his framework would mean for the politics of migration. Rawls’s “ideal theory” only briefly mentions a right of exit for the individual and a “qualified right to limit immigration” for recipient societies. Yet Rawls does not specify what qualifications his theory would entail, nor does he address what right migrants may possess to gain acceptance into another political community, mirroring the current international migration regime. In this piece, I consider the complications Rawls’s inattention to these issues creates for his broader vision of global justice. Yet I also attempt to show how these aspects of Rawls’s theory emerge from an underlying tension which confronts all liberal democratic conceptions of justice, both in theory and in practice: balancing the particularistic notion of the political community, that can endure through acts of exclusion, against the universalistic rights-claims of abstract individuals legitimating and undergirding those communities. In my conclusion, I sketch an alternative rooted in the recent insights of agonistic pluralism. I argue that this framework “breaks” the Rawlsian silence regarding migration and citizenship by productively engaging this tension to move towards more democratically defensible ends.

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual, and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform) may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e., morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence, and common knowledge from epistemic logic.

Why, if at all, does it make sense to assign some responsibilities to states rather than to individuals? There are two contemporary answers. According to the analogical theory, states can be held responsible because they are moral agents, much like human beings. According to the functional theory, states can be held responsible because they are legal persons that act vicariously though individuals, much like principals who act through agents. The two theories of state responsibility belong to parallel traditions of scholarship that have never been clearly distinguished. While the analogical theory dominates IR, political theory, and philosophy, the functional theory prevails in International Law. The purpose of this article is to bridge the gulf between ethical and legal approaches to state responsibility. I argue that IR scholars and political theorists have much to gain from the functional theory. First, it provides a plausible alternative to the analogical theory that avoids common objections to corporate moral agency. Second, the functional theory helps us to understand features of international law that have puzzled IR scholars and political theorists, such as the fact that states are not held criminally responsible. I suggest that states can be 'moral principals' instead of 'moral agents'.