Description
There are three ways that the nature of an international order can inform the moral responsibilities of the institutional agents within it. Two are straightforward. First, as international orders are constituted in part by norms, the responsibilities that states and other institutional agents are understood to bear are recognised and encoded in the international order itself. Second, international orders are variously constraining and enabling. The conditions they create inform what institutional agents can be considered answerable for. A third way that the nature of the international order can inform the moral responsibilities of its constituents is less obvious - and profoundly consequential in crises. Simply, particular distributions of political authority can generate shared responsibilities by making possible sophisticated forms of collective action. I will argue that any international order that creates the potential for ‘joint purposive action’ by 1) establishing channels for (formal and informal) deliberation and 2) fostering a willingness to coordinate actions (or a ‘participatory intention’) amongst its members, even in limited areas, will create shared responsibilities beyond existing areas of cooperation. In the face of existential threats (climate change, global pandemics, nuclear proliferation), we should strive for a future international order that promotes joint purposive action.
