Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States

Should Citizens Pay for Their States' Wrongdoings?
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-754103-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 147 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

States are often held responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, as did Iraq in the aftermath of its invasion of Kuwait. States pay reparations for their historical wrongdoings, as did Chile to the victims of the Pinochet Regime, or Germany to Israel and other countries because of the Holocaust. Some argue that they should pay punitive damages for their international crimes as well.

But state responsibility has a troubling feature: states are corporate agents, comprising flesh and blood citizens. When they turn to the public purse to finance their corporate liabilities, it is their citizens who pay the price. Even citizens who protested against their state's policies, did not know about them, or had no influence on policy makers end up sharing the burden. Why should these citizens pay for their state's wrongdoings, if they don't carry the blame?

Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States develops a fresh justification for citizens' duties to share the burden of their state's wrongdoings. This justification revolves around citizens' participation in their state: drawing on recent debates in the philosophy of collective action, Avia Pasternak shows that citizens are acting together in their state and that their state policies are the product of this collective action. Given this participation, citizens ought to share the burden of remedying harmful wrongs their state policies bring about. However, she also argues that not all citizens in all states are participating in their state. In many authoritarian states, citizens' participation in the state is highly restricted or coerced. Here, ordinary citizens do not share responsibility for their state policies and should not be forced to pay for them. These conclusions carry significant real-world implications for the way domestic international law holds various types of states, and their citizens, responsible for their wrongdoings. This work is essential for political theorists and philosophers grappling with citizen responsibility and duty.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pasternak, Avia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- Intentional Citizenship

- Intentional Citizenship in Democracies and in Autocracies

- Distributing State Responsibility: A Discriminatory Framework

- Chapter 1: State Responsibility and its Distributive Effect

- Chapter 2: Intentional Participation and Non-Proportional Distribution

- Chapter 3: Intentional Participation in the State

- Chapter 4: Intentional Citizenship and Regime Types

- Chapter 5: Distributing State Responsibility

- Chapter 6: Distributing Responsibility -- State Compensation and State Punishment

- Chapter 7: Intentional Citizenship and Historical Wrongs

Über Autor(innen)

Avia Pasternak is an Associate Professor in Political Theory and teaches political philosophy at the Department of Political Science at University College London. She earned her D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University and held visiting positions at Stanford University and Princeton University. She writes on collective responsibility and political obligations in democracies and in non-democratic states and on the ethics of violent protests.