Collective Moral Agency and the Political Process

Abstract

The issue of whether nation-states, international governmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and transnational and multinational corporations can be considered moral agents is a complicated one. One of the central problems in accepting these states, IGOs, NGOs, and international businesses as moral agents is their political and internally pluralistic character. The more complex the organization, the more likely it is to be made up of coalitions of individuals, often organized into formal component institutions or bureaucratic agencies. Complex structure and function encourage individuals and component institutions to develop differing views of the world and the broader organization’s place in it. Participants in a political process are often required to accept significant compromises in their own preferences in order to be able to take any collective action at all. With complexity and compromise at the core of international institutions, how can we say that they bear moral responsibilities? How can there be collective moral agency when not everyone participates in, or even agrees with, all the actions and decisions of the organization?KeywordsMoral ResponsibilityMoral AgencyComplex OrganizationComponent GroupDirty HandThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.