ABSTRACT
The explicit language of responsibility is ubiquitous in world politics. World politics does not work well without the acknowledgement and enactment of responsibility which provides for the stability of expectations, the potential for coordination, trust, and a fair division of labour. Collectives can function as moral agents in world politics. Organisations are collective or corporate moral agents in the sense that they have the capacity to act, albeit under constraints, and because they have the capacity to deliberate about both the ends and the means of action. Institutions could be better structured to facilitate individual moral agency and group deliberation by being organised to provide relevant information and by opening decision-making to wide and diverse participation. A state that has failed in its responsibility to protect loses elements of the presumption of sovereignty and the international community steps in to make repair.
