Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the shortcomings of individualistic understandings of moral agency emphasising unintended and wider consequences. It discusses instances of “Demanding and contesting responsibility in the international community”. The book looks at how the politics of responsibility is practised in different areas of global governance. It draws out how the corporate ability to act morally is predicated on sufficient possibilities to make profit: “ethics ‘start’ only where economic goals are fulfilled”. It explores how the increasingly influential understanding of the world as entangled and interconnected is impacting on liberal modernist notions of political and ethical responsibility. The book shows how “Western powers can claim responsibility for the world” through a discourse of global interconnectedness and the unintended side-effects of their institutional creations.