Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility

Cornelia Ulbert, Peter Finkenbusch, Elena Sondermann, Tobias Debiel, Cornelia Ulbert, Peter Finkenbusch, Elena Sondermann, Tobias Debiel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351781862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

At a time when globalization has side-lined many of the traditional, state-based addressees of legal accountability, it is not clear yet how blame is allocated and contested in the new, highly differentiated, multi-actor governance arrangements of the global economy and world society. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility investigates how actors in complex governance arrangements assign responsibilities to order the world and negotiate who is responsible for what and how.

The book asks how moral duties can be defined beyond the territorial and legal confines of the nation-state; and how obligations and accountability mechanisms for a post-national world, in which responsibility remains vague, ambiguous and contested, can be established. Using an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective, the book explores ontological framings of complexity emphasizing emergence and non-linearity, which challenge classic liberal notions of responsibility and moral agency based on the autonomous subject. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility is perfect for scholars from International Relations, Politics, Philosophy and Political Economy with an interest in the topical and increasingly popular topics of moral agency and complexity.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) 4.0 license.

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Introduction

Moral agency and the politics of responsibility

Elena Sondermann, Cornelia Ulbert and Peter Finkenbusch

Introduction

Responsibility has become a relevant topic in world politics as the rising number of publications shows. Many of them deal with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P),¹ but debates on responsibility are not only restricted to security issues. Other prominent examples include the discussion on corporate social responsibility (CSR)² or the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR)³ in international (environmental) law. As far as the actors of world politics are concerned, responsibility is attributed specifically to powerful states (e.g. Bukovansky et al. 2012). Although there is much talk about responsibility, beyond the formal jurisdiction of the nation-state, however, responsibility is contested in transnational fields where political, economic, and social actors struggle to define the collectively binding rules of moral conduct. There, responsibility is negotiated, delegated and distributed. Since responsibility and acting responsibly are never uncontested, we are interested in the ‘politics of responsibility’. The politics of responsibility plays out in how and why responsibility relationships emerge, develop, and change. Moreover, not only the powerful bear responsibility. Power can also be a result of taking over responsibility.

The authors assembled in this volume discuss this contestedness and the interactions of various actors on different levels from a multi-disciplinary perspective, both through empirical case studies as well as theoretical analyses. When dealing with responsibility the crucial questions are: who is responsible, for what and to whom? In other words: how can responsibility be claimed, and by whom and how can we understand the act of claiming responsibility? How can responsibility be practised, how is it practised and by whom? And above all: for what object or action should responsibility be taken? These questions point to the relevance of agency in several respects. At stake is not only the agency of the ‘bearers’ of responsibility, but also of those who claim and contest existing relationships, hierarchies, and positions. Therefore, we will start with a discussion of (moral) agency and how it can be enhanced, before we turn to unfolding the many meanings of responsibility and its relationship with different forms of agency, and how this affects the politics of responsibility. On this basis, we introduce the chapters of the book and sketch out how they link to our conceptual reflections.

Agency and moral agency: common terms and core critique

Very generally speaking, agency is about acting and the ability to act.⁴ In conventional thinking agency is regarded as a property of the individual, which is mirrored by the common (and mostly unproblematised) equation of agent and actor.⁵ In this understanding, agency relates to events which have been enacted by an individual and that would not have happened otherwise. Agency is then on the one hand associated with an individual being able to formulate preferences and to develop strategies for their realisation, referring to an “internal conversation” (Archer 2003). Second and importantly, it is about the capability to enact these strategies or to refrain from actions. In the following paragraphs, we will touch upon the broad theoretical discussions referring to agency under the headings of intentionality and capability and introduce how they inform our conventional understanding of moral agency, before we turn to a more recent critique of this notion.

Intentionality, broadly understood, involves the abilities to reflect upon potential activities and their consequences, to monitor and potentially adapt behaviour. Anthony Giddens refers to the knowledge that enables individuals to reflect upon their own and others’ practices as much as the context of those practices as “knowledgeability” (Giddens 1984: 3). The degree to which the social and normative background of an individual informs or even constitutes these processes, a core question of the ‘agency–structure debate’, is problematised and answered very differently depending on the theoretical stance one takes. Mainstream modern positivist theory—which dominates economic theory and has informed much of North American political science literature on interests and behaviour as well—regards the individual as mostly autonomous and rational, thereby neglecting or exluding the role norms and other social institutions play in meaning-making processes. These, on the other hand, have been emphasised by constructivist social scientists and critical theory.⁶ Agents rely on their individual experiences on the one hand, but also on the cultural and normative practices that set their “terms of engagement” (see Antje Wiener, Chapter 6). Individual agency is then always to be seen in its broader social (and also organisational) context. It can be increased by belonging to an institution or constrained by the same structures (see Neta Crawford, Chapter 3). In this line of thinking, agency is to a large degree conditioned by social practices and/or an expression of habit, not a result of free choice. Epistemologically, intentionality is called into question by asking how much individuals can know about the effects of their actions. These limits can refer to temporal and local dimensions or to unintended consequences of actions, all of which might not have been foreseeable at the time of decision-making and action-taking (see David Chandler, Chapter 12). Also, situations might arise in which the contribution of a single individual to a certain outcome (generated for instance by a group or organisation, see Crawford, Chapter 3) is very small or even seemingly indistinguishable (the ‘problem of many hands’). With these important limitations in mind, agency is often still linked to a ‘thin’ notion of intentionality as having an understanding (even if inaccurate) of actions, and of being able to explain, defend, or adapt those (see Sebastian Köhler, Neil Roughley and Hanno Sauer, Chapter 4). Regarding moral agency, this implies the knowledge of social norms and of morally right behaviour as well as the ability to evaluate and adapt one’s own actions against these standards, and therefore to know about the ‘morally correct actions’ in a given situation (Joe Hoover discusses this notion of moral agency as well, Chapter 2).

Yet, agency is not only about intentionality but about actions, hence, the enactment of those intentions. Herewith, another relevant aspect comes to the fore: the capability (not) to act, which is dependent on the freedom and resources an individual has to realise her ideas. Regarding moral agency, much of modern liberal thinking simply assumes individuals to have the capacity to freely choose their actions, and Western modern culture rests on this understanding of the individual as the autonomous actor and the construction of the modern actor as an “authorized agent” (Meyer and Jepperson 2000). It forms the basis for our Kantian understanding of accountability/responsibility as liablity because only in light of this ‘double autonomy in agency’ (regarding both, intentionality and capability) individuals can be convincingly praised or blaimed for their actions. However, growing critique of the understanding of agency as a human property and of individuals as rational and autonomous agents has stressed that capability rests on resources which involve the social position and social role an individual holds and are dependent on social context. This leads new approaches to regard agency as a social phenomenon and to take a relational perspective. By asking how agency becomes possible and is being produced, they move from ‘individual’ to ‘social agency’. Agency is then “inextricably linked to social contexts through the relations in which it is embedded” and is about becoming “an agent of something” (Wight 2006: 212). Agency is then not a ‘natural’ and given property of individuals shared by all but instead unequally distributed and depending on the “power agents accumulate by virtue of their positioning in a social context” (Wight 2006: 212). Research in this tradition investigates the mechanisms and relationships which generate agency, asks who is assigned responsibility and what characterises agency in the given situation and context. “Access to agency” is about “critically engaging with the norms of global governance” (see Wiener, Chapter 6) in opposition to merely being in the position to receive and put them into practice. By emphasising the reality of “unequal access to agency” (again, see Wiener) this ultimately raises the issue of empowerment when thinking about agency in international politics.

A different perspective, which highlights the inextricable relationship between agency and environments, is the analytical focus on social practices (Reckwitz 2002). While practices are created by agents, they simultaneously constitute their social and meaningful environment. Hence, practices “create agents and give meaning to agency” (Adler and Pouliot 2011: 23) providing us with roles and values. Practice theory also builds a bridge to approaches that investigate the agency of things and non-human entities by emphasising that material things do have an effect on (human) practices (Bueger and Gadinger 2014). According to actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour 2005) the agency of an actor is not explained as a property of the actor as such, but of the network of those (things) who and which enable him. In light of the increasing importance technologies and computerised programs have and will be having for our everyday lives (the reliance on devices with computing capacities in general; other examples include self-driving cars, intelligent/smart houses or internet bots) but also in highly political contexts (for instance drones being used in military interventions), non-human agency needs to be addressed. First, because those intelligent systems have the capacity to enable and influence human agency. And, second, because the evolution of artificial intelligence to act and to learn more and more independently seems unquestionable. In line with practice theory and ANT, we can think of using and installing technological devices as a social practice and part of the network enabling agency (Ahn 2016; Leander 2013). Coming back to initial remarks on agency, however, leads us to think about the intentionality of (more or less) autonomous systems and algorithms after we have already established their capacity to act. Even if we can assign a restricted notion of intentionality to those devices in the sense of (very fast and precise) goal-oriented or purposive weighing of options, they do not ‘have’ ‘good’ or ‘bad’ intentions, hence the core of what we associate with (moral) agency in the individualistic and traditional sense. These are still confined to the competencies of the ‘humans’ who use, apply and install them (see Köhler et al., Chapter 4).

The following section focuses on different approaches to agency in the international system, thereby also addressing the idea of collective agency and further advancing the critique of the traditional notion of agency as a property of actors. Moreover, picking up the different perspectives raised in the previous sections we will think about the implications of enhancing moral agency.

Different perspectives on (moral) agency in world politics

Agency in the international system has traditionally been associated with states and has been closely linked with the concept of sovereignty. Schools of thought in international relations (IR), differing on most other assumptions as do international liberalism and realism, still agreed on their focus on states as (the sole) agents and moreover their often under-theorised treatment of states ‘as-if’ they were individuals (Wendt 2004) and hence as ‘moral agents’:⁷ states in this thinking are assumed to develop strategies, are judged against their fullfillment of those and deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’. However, different developments have challenged this simplistic treatment of international affairs. First, already with regard to states, things have become more complicated as sovereignty, originally the core source of state agency and closely linked with the norm of non-interference, has changed its meaning. While never to be confused with actual equality, today sovereignty does not preclude discussions and evaluations about to what extent a state is able or willing to attend to its citizens’ security or welfare.

This falls in line with and is linked to a second development, which has brought individuals to the centre stage of international politics (Ainley 2006, 2008). Concepts such as ‘human security’ or ‘human development’ and most importantly the human rights regime itself regard the individual as a potential or actual victim of state action who needs protection by the international community (expressed for instance in the norm of the R2P, see Aidan Hehir and Wiener, Chapters 5 and 6). This attention to individual agency in international politics can also be found in the rise of international criminal law and a tendency to individualise violence. Writing about large-scale atrocities Kirsten Ainley regards the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international criminal law as an expression of the sole focus on individuals as bearers of agency and finds that the social environment is neglected as is the process of achieving agency “through participation in social institutions and in the enactment of social roles” (Ainley 2008: 52). International politics focuses on the individual as the key (moral) agent and the ‘protagonists of evil’, and concerns itself (only) with those violent actions it can frame as acts of individuals. This approach can be found across many different fields of engagement: for example in development policies, ‘human development’ is the key goal and for long, this has been translated into strategies and goals (e.g. the Millennium Development Goals),⁸ which attended to a betterment of the health and welfare or increase of income of individuals, groups and communities. This happened without paying attention to the social structure and political context, which not only surrounded but caused and enabled the people’s situations.

Third, in light of the growing role that international organisations (IOs), non-state actors, or companies (to name just a few) are playing in international politics, it has become obvious that they have attained (or been ascribed) agency in the common sense of the word: they are now in a position to draw attention to policies, to influence agenda-setting, and carry out policies. Consequently, discussions about (moral) agency in world politics have begun to address collective actors beyond the ‘as-if’-treatment of states. They attend to formal institutions and organisations and probe whether they qualify as (moral) agents. In the tradition of the above-discussed notion of individual agency they seek to establish the conditions under which one can speak of an organisation’s intentionality and capability to act. Erskine (2003) has unfolded and defended the notion of “institutional moral agency” based on five characterics: (1) a corporate identity which is more than the sum of the identities of its members and (2) exists over time; (3) a decision-making structure which ensures deliberation and that the group can arrive at a goal that is “more than simply the aggregate of individual aims and intentions” (Erskine 2001: 72). Closely linked, (4) an executive function, which ensures the ability to enact those decisions. Lastly, (5) a group needs a conception of itself. This definition allows us to regard a broad range of organisations as institutional (moral) agents—from universities, the Catholic Church, terrorist groups to IOs and companies. Erskine (2010: 265–266) clarifies that she does not wish to suggest that institutions are the same as individuals but that she is “simply suggesting that institutions share with individual human beings certain capacities that allow both to be considered moral agents”. Although this transfers agency to a collective actor it nevertheless remains firmly in the realm of an individualistic notion of agency. In comparison, understanding organisations as a complex setting or system leads to a different notion of intentionality and of agency. Neta Crawford (Chapter 3) concurs with Erskine when she speaks of organisations or groups as “imperfect moral agents”. Her proposed characteristics actually do touch upon very similar conditions, which also discuss organisations’ intentionality and capacity to act: shared intentions or a common purpose, combined with the ability...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: moral agency and the politics of responsibility
• PART I Challenging traditional notions of moral agency and responsibility
• PART II Demanding and contesting responsibility in the international community
• PART III Practising the politics of responsibility in global governance
• PART IV De-constructing responsibility in an interconnected world
• Index