ABSTRACT
Authoritarian states are ubiquitous throughout human history and at present. Yet such states have received scant attention in existing discussions of political philosophy and theory – especially in relation to the injustices they perpetrate. When agents or representatives of authoritarian states commit injustices, who should bear the responsibilities to redress the effects of such injustices, and on what grounds? Answering this question is of crucial importance to not just the millions of individuals residing in authoritarian states but also the external stakeholders engaging with them and their governments. A robust account of reparative justice in authoritarian states is needed for the appropriate assignment of liabilities to agents, who must then discharge such responsibilities. The advanced account must satisfy three critical criteria – descriptive accuracy, in successfully identifying the right subset of individuals who are responsible; explanatory precision, in providing the correct reasons for which individuals can be assigned the said responsibilities of reparation and resultant liabilities; and praxis, in ensuring that the prescriptions yielded are neither excessively costly nor infeasible.
