ABSTRACT
Direct Distribution Accounts posit that reparative responsibilities over a state-perpetrated injustice should be distributed amongst individuals in accordance with their particular connection to the injustice. If an individual is involved in perpetrating or contributing towards, is culpably negligent in failing to prevent, or benefits from a state-perpetrated injustice, then he must bear a degree of liability in connection with the effects of said injustice. Whilst potent and parsimonious in parts, the five surveyed accounts in this chapter yet have crucial shortcomings when applied to authoritarian contexts. The Perpetrator Liability Account runs into significant epistemic and implementation barriers and leaves behind a sizeable Responsibility Shortfall, which merits swift addressing. The Citizen-exclusive State Culpability Account is far too doctrinally rigid over who may count as a culpable contributor towards state-perpetrated injustices. The Negligence and Culpable Inaction Accounts ask too much of ordinary individual citizens under authoritarian conditions, whilst the Beneficiary Pays Account rests on questionable assumptions concerning agents’ mental states and attitudes towards injustices and is not particularly applicable to contexts where beneficiaries are either coerced or ignorant of the moral dynamics underpinning their benefiting.
