Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations

Erskine, Toni, Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp.xii+241 RAE2008

Can institutions (in the sense of formal organizations) bear duties and be ascribed blame in the same way that we understand individual human beings to be morally responsible for actions? The idea of the 'institutional moral agent' is critically examined in the guise of states, transnational corporations, the UN, NATO and international society in the context of some of the most critical and debated issues and events in international relations, including the Kosovo Campaign, development aid, and genocide in Rwanda.