Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility Part I: Challenging Traditional Notions of Moral Agency and Responsibility Democratic Moral Agency: Altering Unjust Conditions in Practices of Responsibility Promoting Responsible Moral Agency: Enhancing Institutional and Individual Capacities Technologically Blurred Accountability? Technology, Responsibility Gaps and the Robustness of our Everyday Conceptual Scheme Part II: Demanding and Contesting Responsibility in the International Community The Lack of ‘Responsibility’ in the Responsibility to Protect Responsibility Contestations: A Challenge to the Moral Authority of the UN Security Council Part III: Practising the Politics of Responsibility in Global Governance In Search of Equity: Practices of Differentiation and the Evolution of a Geography of Responsibility The Business of Responsibility: Supply Chain Practice and the Construction of the Moral Lead Firm Pluralisation of Authority in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: The Re-Assignment of Responsibility in Polycentric Governance Arrangements Part IV: De-Constructing Responsibility in an Interconnected World Responsibilising through Failure and Denial: Governmentality as Double Failure Bringing Therapeutic Governance Back Home: US Responsibility and Drug-Related Organised Crime in the Americas Distributed Responsibility: Moral Agency in a Non-Linear World Conclusion: Practising the Politics of Responsibility