ABSTRACT

This chapter offers an approach to responsibility informed by the English School by discussing the ways in which responsibilities are negotiated, allocated and implemented in international society. It begins with an overview of theoretical accounts of responsibility by asking what responsibility means in legal and moral terms. The chapter argues that responsibilities are always constructed in social processes that are collectively referred as responsibilisation. It examines how the practices of state responsibility materialise in real life and asks what sort of multidimensional responsibilities states bear and ought to bear regarding climate change. Coercion has been an important means of the expansion of European international society; many non-Western states, including China, were coerced into participating in international practices by way of colonisation and other oppressive means prior to the twentieth century. Within the English School, pluralists take a highly state-centric approach to responsibility. They emphasise the values of states and pay less attention to other ethical aspects of state practices.