sharing the costs of political injustices - avia pasternak

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Avia PasternakSharing the costs of political injustices

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Article

Sharing the costs ofpolitical injustices

Avia PasternakUniversity College London, UK

AbstractIt is commonly thought that when democratic states act wrongly, they should bear thecosts of the harm they cause. However, since states are collective agents, their financialburdens pass on to their individual citizens. This fact raises important questions aboutthe proper distribution of the state’s collective responsibility for its unjust policies. Thisarticle identifies two opposing models for sharing this collective responsibility indemocracies: first, in proportion to citizens’ personal association with the unjust policy;second, by giving each citizen an equal share of the costs. Proportional distribution iscompatible with the principle of fairness. And yet, both in the literature and in politicalpraxis we find many supporters for the equal sharing of the costs of unjust policies indemocracies. How can equal distribution be defended on normative grounds? Thisarticle develops a defense that is grounded in citizens’ associative obligations. I arguethat, at least in some democracies, one of the intrinsic values of the civic bond revolvesaround the joint formation and execution of worthy political goals. This social goodgenerates the political associative obligation to accept an equal distribution of the costsof unjust policies.

KeywordsResponsibility, collective responsibility, associative obligations, civic duties, sharedactions and intentions

When democratic states adopt harmful and unjust policies, it is common practice to hold

them responsible for the consequences of the injustice. However, when democratic states

are made to bear the consequences of their unjust policies, it is their citizens who actually

share the burdens. This fact raises important questions about the just rules for the

Corresponding author:

School of Public Policy, University College London, 29/30 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9QU, UK

Email: [email protected]

Politics, Philosophy & Economics10(2) 188–210

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distribution of collective responsibility in democracies. To see these questions more

clearly, consider the following example. Since 1967 the state of Israel has occupied what

is now commonly referred to as the Palestinian Territories. Palestinians have been denied

political independence, and parts of what used to be Palestinian land have been appro-

priated by Israeli settlers, with the formal and informal encouragement of Israeli govern-

ments. Assuming these and other aspects of the Israeli occupation are unjust, many

people would find it plausible to argue that Israel is responsible for the injustices caused

by the occupation. The notion of ‘responsibility’ can be interpreted in various ways in

this and in similar contexts. The two meanings which will be discussed here are moral

responsibility and consequential responsibility.1 Moral responsibility implies, here, the

attribution of blame (or praise) to the responsible agent.2 In the example above, if the

Israeli government acted wrongly toward the Palestinian people, then, possibly, Israel

should be blamed for this behavior, and be subject to responses such as anger, resent-

ment, and perhaps even punishment.3 Consequential responsibility is defined here as the

assignment of the burdens which the injustice brought about, most importantly the duty

to compensate the victims of the injustice.4 If the Israeli government is consequentially

responsible for the harm caused to the Palestinian people as result of the occupation of

their land, then Israel ought to bear the costs of compensation to the Palestinians, as

determined by some plausible principle.5 Notice that consequential responsibility is dis-

tinct from both causal responsibility and moral responsibility: causal responsibility

points to the agent, object, or phenomena which brought about a particular outcome; con-

sequential responsibility concerns the distribution of the burdens that result from that

outcome; and moral responsibility concerns the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness

of the agent who brought about or participated in bringing about the outcome.6

This article focuses on the attribution of consequential responsibility for the unjust

policies of democratic governments.7 A standard position on this matter is that when

democratic governments act badly, their states ought to pay the price. We find this

position expressed, for example, in many theoretical debates on the assignment of con-

sequential responsibility for climate change, global inequality, and war crimes, as well as

in both international and domestic law (see, for example, Barry, 2005; Dworkin, 1990;

Miller, 2001; Rawls, 1999b: 105–6; Shue, 1999). However, as a matter of fact, when a

state is charged with consequential responsibility for an unjust policy, the burden will be

discharged by the flesh and blood citizens of the state: in the case mentioned above, were

the Palestinian people to receive compensation from Israel, the Israeli government would

have to extract the resources needed for this compensation from its citizens, either

directly by raising an ‘occupation tax’ or indirectly by using its already existing

resources, thus diminishing its ability to provide services and public goods. To put it dif-

ferently, the consequential responsibility of states is, de facto, the shared responsibility

of their citizens.

Since assigning burdens to states implies that their citizens will pay the price, it

follows that the rules for the assignment of consequential responsibility for political

injustices must identify not only the responsible collective agents (states and govern-

ments), but also, and perhaps more importantly, the individual agents who will end up

with the bill. In other words, a complete account of consequential responsibility for

unjust policies in democracies must include a set of rules for the distribution of that

Pasternak 189



burden between the citizens of the state. This article offers an investigation of these

rules. As I suggest in Section 1, there are at least two possible rules for the distribution

of consequential responsibility for political injustices, which I refer to as ‘proportional

distribution’ and ‘equal distribution’.8 Proportional distribution takes into account

citizens’ personal association with the unjust policy when distributing its cost. Its core

drawback is that it is not very practical. But, on the other hand, it corresponds well with

our intuitions about fairness and personal responsibility. The second rule of distribution,

equal distribution (ED), ignores citizens’ personal association with the harm and distri-

butes its costs on an equal basis. It has the obvious advantage of being more practical, but

it is not clear what normative argument can support it. Sections 2 and 3 of the article deal

with this question, specifically in the context of democratic states. As I show, the intui-

tive defense of an ED which is grounded in the notion of democratic authorization has

the disadvantage of not being applicable to those citizens who protest against the policies

of their government. In Section 3, I develop an alternative defense of ED that is grounded

in the notion of associative obligations. Theorists of associative obligations argue that

these obligations exist between those in certain relationships (family members, friends,

and compatriots). They are generated by the intrinsic value of the relationship, of

which they are partly constitutive. I suggest that this line of argument can sometimes

be used in order to defend an ED of the consequential responsibility for political injus-

tices. Accordingly, an ED is partly constitutive of an intrinsically valuable social good

that characterizes the relationship between citizens, at least in some democracies. This

social good is what I refer to as ‘solidary action’, and is the good that is generated by

collectively forming and executing worthy shared goals. In cases in which solidary

action is indeed perceived as an intrinsic good of the political community, it will gener-

ate the obligation to comply with an ED of the costs of collective injustices, and that

obligation is potentially applicable to most citizens. At least in those cases, then, an

ED may be justified on more than practical grounds.

1. Two rules for assigning responsibility for political injustices

Democratic governments often adopt unjust policies, sometimes in the face of public

protest. One of the tasks of the political theorist is to flesh out these injustices and to

point the finger at those who should remedy them. But at whom should the political the-

orist point her finger? Who should bear the costs of remedying a political injustice which

was decided upon by a democratically elected government in a well-functioning democ-

racy? As I suggested earlier, the standard response to this question focuses on the con-

sequential responsibility of the state for the unjust policies perpetrated by its current (or

past) government. This response is likely to be adopted in both the ‘corporatist’ and the

‘individualist’ accounts of the democratic state. Corporatists would assign the conse-

quential responsibility to the state because they perceive it as an independent moral agent

which should be held responsible for its actions (Erskine, 2001; French, 1984; Pettit,

2007: 199). Individualists, who are uncomfortable with the idea that groups are moral

agents (see Corlett, 2001; Lewis, 1991), are still likely to agree that, as a matter of prac-

ticality, states are the institutional units which, at least in the first instance, should be

encumbered with the task of discharging the costs of an unjust policy caused by their

190 Politics, Philosophy & Economics 10(2)



governments. Whether it is grounded in a corporatist or in an individualist position, as we

saw earlier, the claim that the state should bear the costs of remedying a political injus-

tice does not fully disclose the identity of the consequentially responsible agents. States

are collective entities with no real pockets, and their individual citizens end up paying for

their unjust policies. We are therefore faced with a crucial question that is left unan-

swered by the standard response: Which individual citizens should carry the burden of

the injustice?

One answer to this question is that the burden of the injustice should fall on those cit-

izens who are more responsible for it: government policies are collective actions,

namely, the expression and result of the shared intentions and actions of the democratic

collective or of parts of it. But, as with all collective actions, there will be those individ-

ual citizens who had a greater role in bringing about specific unjust policies (for exam-

ple, through their greater levels of support and complicity). We may therefore think it

right to distribute the costs of remedying a political injustice in accordance with citizens’

level of association with that injustice. In what follows, I will refer to a distribution that

follows this intuition as a ‘proportional distribution’ (PD). Proportional distributions

identify some important way (or ways) in which citizens are associated with the

collective harm caused by their state, and assign the consequential responsibility for the

harm in proportion to the level of that association. Relevant factors that can play a role

here are, for example, causal contributions to the unjust policy, failures to act against it,

and perhaps even benefits from it. For simplicity’s sake, I focus here on one specific PD

which takes into account citizens’ morally blameworthy contributions to the unjust pol-

icy (by that I mean contributions which citizens knew or should have known were wrong

and were able to avoid). To give an example, in the case of the Israeli occupation of the

Palestinian territories, a PD of the consequential responsibility of the occupation would

probably imply that at least the ideological leaders of the settlers’ movement, who share

greater moral responsibility for the harms of the occupation than, say, Israeli left-wing

activists, would bear a greater share of the burden.

As this example suggests, a PD corresponds well with our basic moral intuitions about

fairness and personal responsibility. A fair distribution of gains and burdens allocates

them according to some relevant characteristics or traits of the parties. A PD of the cost

of the unjust policy does precisely that, by identifying those individuals who are morally

responsible for the injustice to a greater degree and assigning to them a greater share of

the burden.11 Indeed, PD is advocated by several theorists as the normatively preferred

way for distributing consequential responsibility for political injustices. Take, for exam-

ple, Cass Sunstein and Eric Posner’s recent work on the burdens of climate change injus-

tice, in which they argue that ‘to evaluate the moral considerations touching on claims

between states, one needs to penetrate the veil of the state and consider the activities

of the people who operate their governments and the people who are affected by their

policies’ (2007: 21).12

While PD seems to be, at first glance, the normatively recommended way to distribute

the costs of a political injustice, even a short examination of the theoretical discussions

on this matter and (I would venture) of common political praxis reveals that often PD is

not the preferred form of distribution. Rather, an alternative distribution which is often

adopted is what one may call ‘equal distribution’. In opposition to PD, ED gives each

Pasternak 191



citizen an equal share of the costs of the unjust policy, regardless of their level of

personal moral responsibility for it.13 Note that several specific interpretations of ‘equal

share’ are possible here, for example, nominally equal shares for each citizen or equal

shares adjusted to citizens’ relative capacity to pay. What these interpretations share

in common is the understanding that while citizens should bear the burden of the unjust

policy on some equal basis, their personal association with the unjust policy should not

be taken into account when distributing its cost.14 An ED of the burdens of injustice is

advocated, for example, by Michael Walzer, who argues that

reparations [for war crimes] can hardly be collected only from those members of the

defeated state who were active supporters of the aggression. Instead, the costs are distrib-

uted through the tax system, and through the economic system generally ... In this sense,

citizenship is a common destiny, and no one, not even its opponents, can escape the effects

of a bad regime. (1992: 297, emphasis added)

In a similar vein, as part of her discussion of consequential responsibility for global

injustices, Debra Satz argues that ‘we can legitimately hold people accountable to

redress wrongdoing that they did not themselves commit by pointing to their responsibil-

ities as members of a society that did commit wrongdoing’ (2005: 50, emphasis added).

These theoretical endorsements of some version of ED are to a large extent echoed in

political practice: we are used to governments paying for their misdeeds by using tax-

payers’ money and disregarding individual citizens’ share of personal responsibility for

the collective harm. For example, in the (as yet imaginary) case of Israeli compensation

to the Palestinians, we can imagine that the Israeli government would compensate Pales-

tinians by raising the general tax burden on Israeli citizens and by distributing the costs

of compensation as equally as possible between Israeli citizens, rather than singling out

those who share greater moral responsibility for the wrongs of the occupation.15

What could be the attraction of ED over PD for theorists and for policymakers?

Several factors play a potential role here. One factor that is sometimes mentioned con-

cerns the negative side effects that a PD can have on group members, and that would be

avoided if an ED is adopted. Iris Young, for example, in her work on citizens’ respon-

sibility for global labor injustice, mentions that a PD of the responsibility for this collec-

tive injustice points the finger of blame at some individual members of industrialized

countries, while exonerating others. It therefore encourages citizens to attempt to escape

their share of responsibility, instead of engaging in the forward-looking task of securing

just global supply chains (Young, 2004: 378–9). Young’s concerns could well apply to

the specific case of unjust policies in democracies. Here too a PD of the burden may lead

to mutual accusations and internal divisions, and overall have a detrimental effect on

relations within a political community. An ED might serve the political community

better by protecting stability and good civic relationships.16 A second factor that may

support an ED over PD concerns practicality: due to the size and complex structure of

the modern political community, a PD of the consequential responsibility for an unjust

policy could be extremely costly (Miller, 2007:116; Goodin, 1987). Consider, for exam-

ple, how difficult it would be to implement a pure PD of the costs of the decades-long

Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. The government would have to determine the




specific morally blameworthy contributions of each Israeli citizen to the occupation over

the years, calculating, inter alia, the extent to which citizens knew, or should have

known, that their activities were harmful. Even if it were possible to make such calcula-

tions, the time and resources they require would render the whole project practically

infeasible, thus possibly leaving the costs with the victims.18 From this perspective,

an ED of the costs of unjust policies has the obvious practical advantage of not requiring

similarly complex calculations. In this respect, an ED is equivalent to the legal practice

of strict liability, which assigns liability regardless of fault. As Peter Cane notes, this

practice is designed to protect the interests of the victims and ‘to increase the chance that

those at fault will be held liable in the face of difficulties of proof’ (2002: 84).

Considerations of practicality or concerns about the aforementioned side effects of PD

may lead us to favor ED in many cases of political injustice. But still, we can assume that

there will be some cases in which a PD is feasible, at least to some extent, or will have

more negligible side effects. Should we conclude that in those cases PD is preferable to

ED? Moreover, if indeed practicality leads us to prefer ED to PD, are we making a norma-

tive compromise? After all, as we have seen, PD is supported by our basic moral intuitions

about fairness and personal responsibility: it identifies citizens who are to a greater degree

morally responsible for the injustice and assigns to them a greater share of the burden. ED,

on the other hand, seems to fail the most basic fairness test, by treating alike both those

who are to blame and those who are not.19 Yet despite the fact that ED does not comply

with our intuitions about fairness, many supporters of ED would argue that it can be jus-

tified on more than practical grounds. Accordingly, the very terms of membership of the

democratic political community provide a strong normative justification for an ED – a jus-

tification which exceeds the practical considerations and which counteracts the fairness

objection. This position is echoed in the aforementioned citations from Satz and Walzer.

Both invoke the idea of membership of the political community as the source of a civic

obligation to accept an equal share of the consequential responsibility for unjust policies.20

The claim that citizenship entails the moral obligation to share equally in the

consequential responsibility for governmental policies requires further elaboration and

supporting evidence. After all, it would seem farfetched to argue that membership of

a political community by definition entails the obligation to accept an equal share of the

consequential responsibility for governmental injustices. The specific nature of the polit-

ical community in question must play some role in defining citizens’ obligations, if only

because the nature of political communities varies a great deal. Indeed, notice that ED

does not seem to be equally attractive in all forms of political community. Consider, for

example, a brutal and tyrannical regime whose government terrorizes its population and

deprives it of even basic resources. Here it would seem counterintuitive to argue that the

citizens have a civic obligation to accept the consequential responsibility for their gov-

ernment’s policies. On the other hand, we seem to be much more comfortable with the

idea that citizens of democratic political communities should bear equal consequential

responsibility for their governments’ policies. What is it, then, about the democratic set-

ting (and perhaps about other types of regimes) that justifies an ED of the consequential

responsibility for unjust policies? In the next sections, I will examine some answers to

this question. These will help us to determine whether and when an ED in democracies

can be justified on normative grounds.

Pasternak 193



2. The democratic authorization defense of an ED

One common defense of an ED in democracies concentrates on the idea of political

authorization. It appears, for example, in David Miller’s recent work on collective

responsibility in democracies. Miller likens democratic political communities to what

he calls ‘co-operative groups’ (Miller, 2007).21 As an illustration of an cooperative

group, he describes an employee-controlled firm whose participants ‘have a fair chance

to influence the firm’s decisions’ (Miller, 2007: 113). Miller (2007: 116) suggests that

when a cooperative group makes a decision that has harmful consequences, all members

of the group should share the consequential responsibility for the damage, regardless of

their share of moral responsibility for the harm. The core intuition here is that in dem-

ocratic groups the consequential responsibility for final policy decisions should be dis-

tributed on an equal basis, because all members have authorized the outcome.22 While

they may disagree on the group’s policies, by participating in the collective decision-

making (or by having an opportunity to participate) they are committed to accepting the

final outcome of the decision-making process and to sharing its costs. In the context of

representational democratic politics, the democratic authorization argument translates

into the claim that citizens who participate or have a fair chance to participate, at least

in the general elections, are authorizing the representative government to act in their

name, even if they themselves voted against that government. They can therefore be

expected to bear the consequences of governmental policies. Since all have authorized,

all are consequentially responsible.

The democratic authorization argument views participation in authorization

processes, or an opportunity to participate in them, as a sufficient reason for sharing the

consequential responsibility for the outcomes of these processes on an equal basis. It

rejects the claim that an ED is unfair to some citizens because, as it suggests, all citizens

have a fair chance to influence the collective decisions of the group.23 Yet I would argue

that this rejection of the fairness objection to an ED is insufficient, because it excludes

citizens who protest enough against their government’s policies. In order to understand

this weakness of the democratic authorization argument, we need to devote some atten-

tion to the notions of political authorization and representation. These notions are notor-

iously contested, and there are ongoing disagreements about the relationship that

political representatives ought to have with citizens in whose name they allegedly act.

The answers to this question usually attempt to strike a balance between the ‘mandate

view’, according to which representatives follow the direct instructions of citizens, and

the ‘independence view’, according to which representatives should act as free agents

(Pitkin, 1972: Ch. 7). Take, for example, Hanna Pitkin’s seminal account of ‘substantial

representation’, which arguably allows for the independent conduct of representatives as

well as for the direct, albeit limited influence of citizens. Pitkin argues that political rep-

resentation consists of ‘promoting the interests of the represented ... but in such a way

that [the latter] does not object to what is done in his name’ (1972: 21). Accordingly,

a citizen authorizes the actions of her elected representative so long as the representative

does not act against her explicit objections. As David Runciman notes, this account of

political representation ‘comes closest to capturing the way the concept of representation

has evolved in modern democratic states’, where ‘the most significant forms of political




control ... derive not from positive acts of instruction ... on the part of the represented, but

from the possibility of their objecting to what is being done on their behalf’ (2007: 96–7).

Pitkin suggests that the policies of political representatives are authorized by citizens

only to the extent that citizens do not explicitly object to those policies. This limitation,

which Runciman refers to as the ‘non-objection criterion’, amounts to an important

objection to the democratic authorization defense of an ED. For if we accept this criter-

ion, then we are bound to conclude that when an individual citizen objects to a govern-

mental policy, that policy is no longer performed in her name, that is, it does not

represent her. This conclusion implies, as Runciman argues, that democratic politics

have less to do with the representation of individual citizens (as in, the government is

acting in my name) and more to do with the collective representation of the body of cit-

izens, or the public. A democratic government can plausibly argue that it represents the

public, as a group, unless a sufficiently large number of members of the public object to

its policy. But that government cannot argue that it represents each and every individual

citizen; specifically, it does not represent those who explicitly object to its policies.24

Naturally, the assertion that citizens who object to their government’s policies are not

represented by it requires a further definition of what counts as an ‘explicit enough’

objection to break the bond of representation between a citizen and her government.

We can probably agree with Miller that citizens who have a fair chance of participation

in a democratic process do at least apparently authorize their government to act in their

name, and therefore need to make a clear statement of their disapproval of governmental

policies. Putting aside the question of what actions will suffice to express such disap-

proval, the point here is that the democratic authorization argument is wrong to suggest

that all citizens of a democracy authorize their governments to act in their name. At least

those citizens who protest to a sufficient degree against their government have not autho-

rized it or at least have legitimately retracted their original authorization, and therefore

should not be seen as equally authorizing the unjust policy. The democratic authorization

argument will not apply to these citizens, who can rightly argue that a PD which takes

into account the extent to which they actually support the unjust policy is more fair, and

therefore morally preferable. The question then is whether we can provide an alternative

justification for ED which could also potentially apply to those citizens who protest

enough against the unjust policy. In the next section, I develop such a justification.

3. ED as a political associative obligation

In the previous section, we saw that the democratic authorization argument cannot pro-

vide a comprehensive defense of an ED of the costs of political injustices, in the sense

that it does not apply to those citizens who protest enough against the government’s pol-

icy. The alternative defense that will be developed in the reminder of this article

addresses this problem by drawing upon the idea of associative obligations (AOs). AOs

are obligations that those in certain social groups and relationships have to each other.

These obligations are special (in the sense that they do not extend to persons outside the

group) and they are not necessarily voluntary (that is, they do not depend on the

voluntary nature of the association and they cannot be rescinded simply by an act of will)

(Horton, 2006: 429). It has been suggested that the political obligations of citizens, such

Pasternak 195



as the obligation to obey the law or to care for one’s fellow citizens, should be under-

stood as AOs (Dworkin, 1986: 195–216; Scheffler, 2001: 48–65; Tamir, 1993: Ch. 5).

This interpretation of political obligations has been subject to critique, but in what fol-

lows I will not attempt to defend it.27 My goal here is more modest: I argue that the idea

of political AOs can provide, under some circumstances, a normative argument for an

ED of consequential responsibility in democracies. In other words, I argue that if polit-

ical AOs exist in democratic political communities, then, under some circumstances, one

of them will be the obligation to share equally the costs of the consequential responsi-

bility for political injustices; this obligation potentially applies to the protesting citizen

as well.

Very briefly, AOs exist within relationships whose very nature entails having

obligations between those within such relationships, such as found within families and

friendships (Raz, 1989). The source of such obligations is some intrinsic value of these

relationships, which the AOs are partly constitutive of. An oft-cited example is that of

friendship: one of the intrinsic values of friendship is that it generates mutual concern

between friends. The AOs that exist between friends (for example, to assist a friend in

need) are expressions of this mutual concern. In what follows I propose a construction

similar to this example, but applied to the case of the ED of consequential responsibility

in democracies: I argue that such an ED is partly constitutive of an intrinsic value which

characterizes membership of a democratic state, and is therefore a political AO of citi-

zens in democracies. I call this value ‘solidary action’. I will first explain what this value

means in general and then examine its application to the case of democracies.

3.1. The social good of solidary action

The good which I refer to as ‘solidary action’ is generated by the forming together of

worthy shared goals and by the executing together of these shared goals. The value of

solidary action is derived from the togetherness of these activities. Here, this together-

ness carries a specific sense, which consists of two components. First, in order to act

in solidarity, a group of people must be acting jointly (or collectively) toward the attain-

ment of their common goal. Acting jointly means that the members of the group have a

shared common goal and an intention to contribute to that goal, and that they are aware

of and responsive to each other’s intentions.28 Notice, then, that not every action of a

group member will fall under the category of joint action: group members may be acting

‘privately’ by doing things that have no relation to the group’s common goal and of

which other members are not aware. Solidary action can happen only in relation to the

actions of group members that are ‘public’ in the sense described here.

The second component of ‘solidary action’ that is pertinent for the discussion here is

that people who act in solidarity perceive themselves as equal participants in their joint

activity, regardless of their personal contributions to it. To put it differently, people who

act in solidarity view themselves as acting together in the sense that they forego their

varying levels of contributions to the joint action and instead act as if they are all equal

contributors. This, I believe, is a rather common perception of joint human activities, and

it characterizes many of our relationships. Consider, for example, the following mundane

scenario: a small group of people is pushing a stuck car out of the mud. Their joint efforts




finally succeed; the wheels of the car are released and the car is free to go. Despite

being covered in mud, we may assume, the participating individuals experience a sense

of elation when their efforts bring about the desired result. We can imagine them

exchanging satisfied looks with each other. What passes between them at this moment

is a simple recognition: ‘We did it!’ They sense that they achieved their goal together,

and they take pleasure in that simple fact. I suggest that a characteristic of this sense of

togetherness, or common achievement, is that the individuals in this example view

themselves as equal participants in their joint effort: they are not concerned with how

much each contributed to this joint effort, nor does any of them feel she deserves a

greater (or smaller) portion of the driver’s thanks. Rather, an essential element of their

sheer enjoyment in their success as a team is precisely that they are equal participants,

each having an equal share in their success.29

As the above example suggests, solidary action is an intrinsically valuable social

good. By that I mean that people who are acting in solidarity toward a common goal have

good reasons to feel enjoyment and satisfaction not just from the achievement of the goal

itself, but also from the very fact that they perform it together in the sense I described

above. There are at least two good reasons for valuing solidary action. First, people who

act in solidarity get the opportunity to relate to each other in a specific sense, because

they share a common fate for their actions, whether in success or failure. This specific

sense of relating to others is, I think, an essential human experience, part of the range

of human interactions that are constitutive of our social nature. Second, solidary action

is valuable because there are many worthy social projects that would not be realized

unless their participants were inclined to perform them in solidarity (compare Feinberg,

1991: 61–3). Consider the example of domestic partnership. This type of relationship is

commonly understood to be based on high levels of trust and intimacy between its par-

ticipants. I would argue that, at least according to the common understanding of domestic

partnership, domestic partners should normally be acting in solidarity with each other

with regards to the shared parts of their lives. That is, domestic partners should view

themselves as having equal shares in their joint activities. Arguably, this willingness

to view oneself as an equal participant in the relationship is necessary in order for the

trust and intimacy that characterize domestic partnerships to grow, as these important

sentiments thrive only when the partners are willing to share equally the burden of their

joint decisions. To put it differently, the thriving of the relationship we usually associate

with domestic partnerships is at least partly dependent on its participants’ sense of solid-

ary action.31

We can now go back to the question of the distribution of the costs of consequential

responsibility in groups. To recall, the question is whether there is a normative argument

to support the ED of consequential responsibility among members of groups that have

committed a collective injustice. Solidary action provides precisely such a normative

argument. For if indeed solidary action is an intrinsically valuable social good that char-

acterizes certain relationships, then in those relationships the equal sharing of the con-

sequential responsibility for the group’s joint actions is in fact an associative

obligation of its participants. Equal sharing is an AO because it is constitutive of the

social good of solidary action: group members who are acting in solidarity perceive

themselves as equal participants in their joint activity that have equal shares in its

Pasternak 197



outcome. In other words, they recognize themselves as bearing equal consequential

responsibility for the outcome of that activity. An ED of the collective burden of a

group’s joint actions is then part of what defines the good of solidary action (in the same

way that caring for a friend’s well-being is part of what defines mutual concern between

friends). Since solidary action is an intrinsically valuable activity, there are ethical rea-

sons to comply with the obligations that are partly constitutive of it.32

I have argued that solidary action justifies the equal sharing of the consequential

responsibility for a group’s joint actions.33 This justification applies in principle to both

the group’s just and unjust actions, specifically in cases in which the group is worthy

overall and has an enduring nature. By ‘enduring’ I mean that the group has a history

and a future, and that the component of endurance over time is attached to the goods that

the group produces for its members. In enduring groups, members perceive themselves

as participants in an ongoing joint project that lasts over time and of which they will con-

tinue to be part in the future. An example of such a group, which has already mentioned,

is that of domestic partnership. One of the essential characteristics of this relationship is

that, when successful, it endures over time. When the value of solidary action charac-

terizes an enduring group which is a worthy project overall, the implication would be

that, at least as a general rule, its members view the range of their joint activities as

an expression of their acting in solidarity. This is so because the value of acting in sol-

idarity over time can only be realized if group members are willing, as a general rule, to

share the costs of group actions over time. Members of enduring groups which are char-

acterized by the value of solidary action will be under the obligation to share the costs of

the group’s collective actions on an equal basis, even in those particular instances in

which the joint activity is unjust or leads to an unjust outcome, so long as the group is

a worthy project overall.

It is worth noting that there will be types of groups in which solidary action cannot

justify the equal distribution of unjust group actions. What I have in mind are, first,

enduring groups which are by any reasonable standard not worthy overall (for example,

an SS unit). In such groups, even if their members sense that they act in solidarity, their

relationship cannot generate genuine obligations. After all, like all AOs, the duty to share

consequential responsibility on an equal basis cannot be generated by relationships that

are inherently bad or unjust. The source of AOs is the value of the social good they sup-

port; a joint activity that is aimed at achieving inherently bad projects has no intrinsic

value, and therefore generates no AOs.34 Second, there are cases of ‘transient groups’

which are temporary by their nature. Transient groups are usually created around a single

event and dissolve in its aftermath. Transient groups may revolve around worthy or

unworthy joint projects. A looting mob, for example, is an unworthy transient group,

while a group of people helping to push a car out of a mud is presumably a worthy tran-

sient group. The members of a transient group can certainly experience a sense of solid-

ary action which could justify the equal sharing of the group’s consequential

responsibility, even if the group’s overall activity has some unjust components. How-

ever, the transient nature of the group renders it more likely that the group will not con-

stitute a significantly valuable relationship between its members. To put it differently, in

transient groups members are likely to be related to each other in a very weak sense, and

for that reason the relationship would simply not be valuable enough to generate




meaningful AOs.35 In enduring groups, on the other hand, group members are likely to

see their membership in the group as more significant, inter alia because of its long-

lasting nature. For that reason, enduring groups which revolve around worthy projects

provide the clearest cases in which solidary action generates the AO to share the costs

of the group’s actions on an equal basis.

3.2. Solidary action in democracies

The previous section discussed the notion of solidary action in general. It is now time to

examine its relevance to the particular question of consequential responsibility in democ-

racies. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the starting point of my argument is

that political communities in general, and democracies in particular, can generate

genuine AOs for their citizens. The exact content of citizens’ political AOs will be deter-

mined by whatever intrinsic values their particular political community has. For exam-

ple, it has been argued that an intrinsic value of democracies for their citizens is that they

enjoy the status of free and equal members of the collective body that has significant

control over their lives. This social good grounds certain AOs for citizens in democra-

cies, namely, AOs that are partly constitutive of that good (for example, the obligation

to obey the law) (Mason 1997: 440). In this subsection, I suggest that solidary action can

also be, and often is, an intrinsic value of democracies and that as such it generates the

AO to share the costs of national collective injustices on an equal basis.

To recall, I mentioned before the two components of solidary action: first, people who

act in solidarity are acting jointly to achieve a worthy social goal and, second, they view

themselves as equal participants in their joint project. Moreover, I suggested that solid-

ary action can ground an ED of consequential responsibility for injustices in enduring

groups (namely, groups that last over time). I would argue that, under normal circum-

stances, the formal acts of government in democracies fit this description, so that they

are the solidary actions of the citizenry, which is a worthy enduring group. Thus, first,

the formal acts of government are commonly understood to be the joint actions of a

country’s citizens, because the citizens usually share the common goal of living in a

self-ruling political community – a goal which is an enduring, long-lasting, and worthy

collective project. This goal is exercised through the formal institutions of the state, to

which citizens regularly contribute in various ways (political participation, obedience

to the law, tax payments, and so on). Citizens are usually aware of the fact that they share

the common goal of self-rule, exercised through the formal institutions of their state, and

they are responsive to each other’s intentions (there are exceptions to this claim, which

will be discussed later on).37 Next, I would argue that democratic citizens tend to view

their individual and varied contributions to the formation and execution of formal

governmental policies as equal elements of the overall outcome, thus complying with the

second component of solidary action. While I will not be able to provide empirical

evidence for this claim here, it is supported by the presence of common sentiments. Con-

sider, for example, the powerful sense citizens often have that ‘this is their government’,

even when they did not personally authorize it and even if they protest against its

policies. Next, consider the sense of shame, or at least discomfort, we tend to feel when

our governments act badly, even if we personally ‘offset’ our contributions to the

Pasternak 199



objectionable policy. These sentiments reflect an important perception which citizens nor-

mally have of their political membership: that each of us is tied to the political commu-

nity’s shared political goals and institutions in a way that does not depend on our

personal contributions. As suggested earlier, this perception is valuable, for two reasons.

First, it enables citizens to connect to each other in a specific, deep, and important sense.38

Second, citizens’ willingness to participate in and to contribute to their political lives

together is quite probably enhanced by the fact that they feel that over time they are acting

in solidarity with fellow citizens. Consider, for example, the case of soldiers who are asked

to fight a war for their country. The sacrifice these soldiers may have to make can be very

high and they are more likely to be willing to make it if they are certain that the rest of the

citizenry will share the burden of the actions that they are performing for the collective. To

the extent that political solidary action reinforces the ties between citizens in this way, it

enhances the ability of the democratic state to function and thus to continue to produce the

other social goods that democratic states, as enduring social projects, generate. For that

reason, too, political solidary action is valuable for democratic citizens.

I argued earlier that enduring relationships which are characterized by the good of

solidary action generate the AO to share the costs of the group’s joint activities on an

equal basis. We thus come to the conclusion that if solidary action is indeed an

intrinsic value which characterizes democratic citizenship, then citizenship in a dem-

ocratic political community brings with it, together with other political AOs, the AO

to share equally the costs of the consequential responsibility of the state’s formal

actions, even if they are unjust. According to this line of defense of an ED, sharing

the costs of the political community’s joint activities on an equal basis is part of the

burdens of citizenship, because it protects something that is valuable in that citizen-

ship, namely, political solidary action. Sharing the costs of national consequential

responsibility on an equal basis is partly constitutive of the citizens’ sense that they

are acting in solidarity with each other. To the extent that citizens value solidary

action, they have an ethical reason to comply with the obligation that is constitutive

of it.39

3.3. Objections and limitations

I argued in the previous subsection that the notion of solidary action can explain why

democratic citizenship carries with it the obligation to share the costs of political injus-

tices equally. It is worth pointing out the difference between this argument and the dem-

ocratic authorization argument which was discussed earlier. To recall, the democratic

authorization argument justified ED on the basis of citizens’ participation, or ability

to participate, in political decision-making. As I suggested, the drawback of this argu-

ment is that it does not apply to citizens who have expressed dissent from governmental

policies to a sufficient degree, and in some instances that may turn out to be a significant

part of the population. My alternative defense of ED, which revolves around the value of

solidary action to citizens, is potentially applicable even to those who protest against the

government. After all, acting in solidarity with one’s fellow citizens via the formal acts

of one’s government is a valuable activity in and of itself, regardless of whether one is

also disagreeing with specific policies of the government. To recall, the reasons to value




such political solidary action are the fact that it allows for the development of deeper

attachments between citizens and that it fortifies citizens’ willingness to perform the

tasks which are necessary for the maintenance of the state. These reasons should be

attractive to the protesting citizen as well, who would therefore be obliged to comply

with the AO that accompanies that social good.

Nevertheless, while the solidary action argument can apply even to protesting

citizens who have not authorized the government, it does not necessarily apply to all

citizens and under all circumstances. In the reminder of this section, I will mention two

objections to the argument, which will help to clarify its scope. The first objection con-

cerns the extent to which actual practices and conventions in democracies fit the pic-

ture of democratic citizenship I have portrayed here. The second objection concerns

the extent to which individual citizens who do not recognize the value of solidary

action are under an obligation to comply with the AO that accompanies that value.

While these objections highlight the limitations of the argument, they do not under-

mine its value in specific instances.

The first objection to the solidary action argument questions the extent to which exist-

ing practices and conventions of democratic political communities recognize its value.

After all, as proponents of the idea of AOs point out, the content of the AOs that are gen-

erated within specific relationships is dictated by the existing practices and conventions

that define those relationships (Dworkin, 1986: 197; Horton, 2007: 12). To give an

example, friendship is understood in modern western cultures to be a relationship that

entails mutual concern between friends, but not mutual economic dependency. So, gen-

erally speaking, friends have the AO to care for each other, but not to support each other

financially. A defense of an ED of the consequential responsibility for political injustices

that rests on the value of political solidary action must therefore assume that the social

practices and conventions in the democracy in question recognize the value of political

solidary action and define democratic citizenship in a way that incorporates this value.

This requirement raises the objection that solidary action is not actually recognized as

intrinsically valuable, at least in some democratic cultures. After all, while I suggested

before that there are reasons to think that, as a matter of fact, citizens in democracies do

value political solidary action, it is nevertheless true that this social good is not necessarily

attached to the democratic ethos, and that a specific democratic political culture may sim-

ply not include the value of political solidary action or not recognize it as significant

enough to generate political AOs. There are many reasons why this may happen, and one

important example is the case of deeply divided democracies whose citizens are in the

process of losing or no longer have a shared political vision. In such scenarios, citizens

will either no longer be acting jointly to maintain the political institutions of their

country (in the sense that they will be working toward conflicting political visions)

or they will derive no value from seeing themselves as equal participants in the shared

project of a united political community. As a result, solidary action, as a distinct and

valuable social good, will not be manifested in their country’s political culture and will

not serve as a defense of an ED of political injustices.40 Solidary action can serve as a

defense of an ED only in democracies which exhibit practices and conventions (as

expressed in their political culture and in their actual treatment of their own citizens)

that include that value.

Pasternak 201



The second objection to the solidary action defense of an ED concerns the extent to

which particular individual citizens within the state recognize the value of political

solidary action. The concern here is that even if the general practices and conventions

of a political community endorse the social good of political solidary action, there

may be individual citizens who dissent from this common view. Here we should

distinguish between citizens who see no value in their nonvoluntary membership in the

political community, and for that reason reject the claim that it generates genuine

obligations, and citizens who recognize the value of the political community, but do not

accept its particular interpretation of civic obligations which includes the idea of ED. As

to the first of these groups, it seems that, like all other arguments that concern political

obligations, the claim that citizens have political associative obligations must concede

that there may be some individuals within the political community to whom the argu-

ment does not apply, namely, those who genuinely reject the claim that their political

membership is of some value. Notice, however, that this group of dissenters is likely to

be extremely small, if not marginal, in well-functioning democracies. Nevertheless, the

defense of ED that is grounded in the value of solidary action would not apply to this

particular group.

What about citizens who acknowledge that their membership of the political commu-

nity generates obligations for themselves, but reject the claim that political solidary

action in itself is of value? Here the answer is different. For as theorists of associative

obligations often stress, their specific content within a given relationship will be deter-

mined by their ‘objective side’, as John Horton puts it. In the case of political associa-

tive obligations that means the ‘social convention, practice, rules ... which are

independent of the sentiments, emotions, attitudes or point of view of the member’

(Horton, 2007: 13. Compare Dworkin, 1986: 203-5; Mason, 2000: 23; Scheffler,

2001:104). In other words, once a citizen acknowledges the powerful value of her

membership of the political community, the specific set of obligations which she

would have as a result of her membership is what the general practice in the political

community dictates, rather than her own unique interpretation (although she may well

participate in the process of defining that general practice). This does not mean that

the general understanding of the civic duties in a political community should not be

subject to critique and to changes. But as long as a sufficient portion of the citizens

define the content of their associative obligations in a way that includes the ED of the

state’s consequential responsibility, this obligation will be part of the general set that

the citizens in this particular community have, even if some personally fail to recog-

nize this particular value.41 The second objection is therefore correct in that, quite

likely, some citizens will disregard the value of solidary action. But as long as these

citizens remain a small enough minority, they will be under an obligation to comply

with the duties that are generated by the political vision of their fellow citizens,

including the obligation to accept an equal distribution of the costs of political injus-

tices. If, on the other hand, the number of citizens who do not acknowledge this value

grows, then its force as a source of civic obligation will be contested and wane. In

such scenarios, alternative arguments such as democratic authorization or mere con-

siderations of practicality may be better suited to justify an ED of the burdens of polit-

ical injustices.




4. Conclusions

This article has attempted to ‘penetrate the veil’ of a democratic state that is charged

with the duty to bear the costs of an unjust policy it adopted. I have suggested that

when the state discharges this duty, the actual costs will fall on flesh-and-blood citi-

zens, and that this fact calls for thinking about the proper rules for the distribution of

the state’s consequential responsibility for political injustices between its citizens.

Two models for such a distribution were discussed here. One of these distributes the

costs of the collective injustice on a proportional basis, taking into account citizens’

personal association with the harm. The other views all citizens as equal in their

relation to the harm, and distributes the costs on some equal basis. While ED may

be justified on practical grounds, the article has focused on normative considerations

which explain why this model is often preferred by theorists and policymakers. The

normative defense I developed does not rely on the act of authorizing the government

through potential participation in the electoral system. Rather, it is grounded in the

idea that sharing the costs of public policies on an equal basis is of value in and of

itself because it allows citizens to relate to each other in a deeper and significant way.

Going back to the example that opened this article, were Israel to discharge its duties

of compensation to the Palestinian people, its citizens would have to choose between

the following two options: an equal distribution of the burden, which would comple-

ment their self-understanding as equal contributors and equal bearers of their shared

and enduring political project; or a proportional distribution which would single out

those more culpable in the injustice of the occupation (for example, cabinet members

who facilitated the occupation throughout the years, the ideological leaders of the set-

tlers’ movement, settlers who took part in the occupation while being fully aware of

the implications of their actions, and so on) and assign a greater portion of the burden

to them. The discussion here does not offer a conclusive normative recommendation

for ED in this and in similar scenarios.42 As we have seen, the defense that is grounded

in democratic authorization and the defense that is grounded in solidary action apply

to a limited set of cases or to a limited portion of the population, or both. Nevertheless,

it is worth bearing in mind that an ED of the costs of political injustices is a common

practice which, I would venture, is largely supported by common sentiments. It is cer-

tainly possible that practical considerations, which point to the potentially high cost of

a proper PD, are the main reasons why citizens and policymakers prefer an ED of the

burden of unjust policies. Yet there will be specific cases in which the practices and

conventions of the democracy in question cherish solidary action as an intrinsically

valuable social activity. At least in those cases compliance with an ED of the outcomes

of the joint activities of citizens will be a civic associative obligation, similar in this

respect to the obligation to obey the law or to care for one’s fellow citizens.

Notes

I wish to thank Joshua Cohen, Helena DeBres, Joanna Firth, Paul Gowder, John Horton, Seth Lazar,

Brad Mchose, David Miller, Rob Reich, David Runciman, Natan Sachs, Debra Satz, Ben Saunders,

Assaf Sharon, Helen Stacy, Zofia Stemplowska, Patrick Tomlin, Lea Ypi, and an anonymous referee

of Politics, Philosophy and Economics for their comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this

Pasternak 203



article were presented at the Political Theory Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the

Stanford Global Justice Workshop, the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop, and the University of

Stirling Philosophy Workshop. Most of my work on this article was conducted while I was a

post-doctoral fellow at the Program on Global Justice and the Center on Ethics at Stanford Univer-

sity. I am grateful for the support and the excellent research environment that these centers provided.

1. ‘Responsibility’ has other important meanings, which are less relevant for the current discus-

sion. See, for example, Hart (1970: 211–30).

2. This definition of moral responsibility follows Strawson (1982).

3. The claim that ‘Israel’ is morally responsible for its policy needs to be supported by an account

of the moral agency of groups. I am agnostic here about the question of whether groups, in

general, and states, in particular, are moral agents.

4. The term is borrowed from Ronald Dworkin, although I am using it in a somewhat different

sense. See Ronald Dworkin (2000: 287).

5. What precisely ‘compensation’ to the Palestinians would entail is not a central point of this

article. I imagine that at the very least it would include resources for the construction of a

decent Palestinian political society as well as monetary compensation for loss of life and

property.

6. These three forms of responsibility are connected in various ways, which due to limitations of

space I cannot fully reflect upon. Briefly, causal responsibility is a necessary condition of

moral responsibility: an agent is not morally responsible for an outcome to which she is not cau-

sally related (see Hart, 1970: 215–26). However, causal responsibility is not a necessary condi-

tion of consequential responsibility. For example, agents can sometimes be held consequentially

responsible for an injustice from which they benefited, rather than caused. Moral responsibility

often grounds the consequential responsibility of an agent, as we tend to think that the agent who

is to be blamed for a bad outcome is the agent who should pay for that bad outcome. However,

that is not necessarily the case. Indeed, as I will later on suggest, it is possible to hold citizens in

democracies consequentially responsible for their government’s policies regardless of their own

share of moral responsibility for these policies.

7. I use the notions ‘political injustice’ and ‘unjust policy’ interchangeably.

8. One possible critique, in terms of the question Is pose here, is that citizens’ share of the burden

of consequential responsibility for governmental injustices simply part of their more general set

of civic burdens and subject to the general rules of the distribution of burdens, in the state?

Although the question of the distribution of consequential responsibility is indeed a question

of distributive justice, there are nevertheless good reasons to examine it separately from the dis-

tribution of other social burdens. Most importantly, the distribution of consequential responsi-

bility for governmental injustices relates directly to the basic moral intuition that perpetrators

of injustices should be held responsible for their actions. It therefore merits a separate discus-

sion, and perhaps a special rule which will accommodate this intuition.

9. Perhaps the best testimony for this is that so many authors assign consequential responsibility

to states without conceding to the corporatist understanding of the separate agency of the state.

10. Such calculations must take into account the usual rules that govern the attribution of moral

responsibility (causation, mental state, and control over actions).

11. Notice that our intuitions about fairness and personal responsibility serve to justify specifi-

cally the PD that takes into account citizens’ morally blameworthy contributions. Whether

other forms of PD (for example, one that concerns the level of benefit from the harm) are




compatible with those intuitions or can be justified at all on normative grounds are separate

questions which cannot be explored within the scope of this article.

12. Other advocates of a PD of collective consequential responsibility are Thomas Pogge, who

argues that the scope of our duty to reform unjust institutions is determined in light of the

extent to which we participate in those institutions and contribute to the injustices they com-

mit, and Larry May, who calls for the extraction of monetary penalties from those heads of

corporations who cause harm to third parties. See Pogge (2002: 50) and May (1987: 104).

13. A third model of distribution would allocate the costs of an unjust policy on a random basis:

some citizens end up carrying a greater share of the burden simply due to bad luck and no

attempt is made to transfer some of the burden to other citizens on a proportional or equal

basis (comprehensive economic sanctions can have this effect on the population of the sanc-

tioned country). I do not discuss this model here, mainly because it is very hard to justify on

normative grounds.

14. In other words, ED is a principle of non-proportional and nonrandom distribution. Choosing

between the different interpretations of this principle requires further normative distinctions about

the nature of truly equal distribution or equal shares. These distinctions may suggest that an ED

should take into account the benefits that individual citizens derived from the collective harm.

15. The Palestinians would be entitled to more than monetary compensation (for example, the

return of their lands), and this fact could imply that settlers would bear more costs than other

Israeli citizens, because they would have to evacuate their homes. An ED of the burden would

therefore require that the Israeli settlers themselves are compensated for their losses by other

Israelis. Indeed, the settlers that were evacuated in the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza

Strip were promised compensation by the Israeli government.

16. On the other hand, an ED may also have negative side effects. For example, it may motivate

individuals to continue their contributions to unjust policies if they know they will not be

singled out and sanctioned for their participation.

17. See Miller (2007: 116). For a related critique, see Goodin (1987).

18. Notice that even if a PD is most likely unattainable in its pure form, it should not be withdrawn

from the range of possible distributions of the consequential responsibility for political injus-

tices. While we may agree that the complex nature of political injustice does not usually allow

us to identify accurately the exact relative contributions of citizens, it could still be possible to

develop a model of distribution that would be at least partly proportional, taking into account

the more obvious relative contributions of some participating members (for example, those of

leading policymakers and so on).

19. Compare Kelly (2003: 119), May (1987: 104) (whose arguments are concerned with corpora-

tions rather than states), and Sunstein and Posner (2007: 22).

20. For a similar line, see Arendt (1987: 43–50) and Jaspers (2000: 55–7).

21. Miller suggests that democracies have both the characteristics of cooperative groups and of

‘like-minded groups’. Due to limitations of space I am focusing here on the cooperative com-

ponent of his argument, which is more relevant to the discussion at hand.

22. Miller also mentions that members of cooperative groups enjoy a fair distribution of the

benefits of cooperation. This seems to be a potentially different argument for an ED of con-

sequential responsibility, one which relies on the principle of fair play rather than on demo-

cratic authorization. Accordingly, members of a cooperative group should accept the loses

that are generated by bad collective decisions, because at other times they enjoy the benefits

Pasternak 205



generated by good decisions. While this is a plausible argument, it is subject to the well-known

objection that obligations of fair play are generated only in voluntary arrangements.

23. There will always be a minority of adult citizens who are not eligible to or cannot vote (for

example, the mentally disabled), and presumably the democratic authorization argument does

not include them. Like Miller I do not examine to what extent my alternative defense of an ED

applies to mentally impaired citizens.

24. One could raise the objection that the democratic authorization argument need not rest on

Pitkin’s particular interpretation of political representation, which includes the non-

objection criteria. However, in response, I would argue that any plausible interpretation of the

idea of political representation must give some room for the views of the represented agent on

the policies that are performed in her name. A view that argues that a citizen is personally

represented by her elected official no matter what that official does goes against the core idea

that political representatives represent, at least to a minimal degree, those in whose name they

act. See Pitkin (1972: Ch. 2) for further discussion of the problems with such a limited view of

representation. I thank John Horton for pressing me to clarify this point.

25. Notice that Runciman himself does not adopt a PD in democracies, but instead argues that the

most appropriate model of consequential responsibility in states should follow the pattern of

corporate limited liability. See Runciman (2007: 108–12). As I argued in Section 1, since the

burdens of consequential responsibility will eventually fall on citizens, there is room for think-

ing about the rules of its distribution even if we accept the corporate view of the state.

26. This definition follows John Horton (2006: 429).

27. John Horton offers persuasive replies to major critiques of the AOs argument in Horton

(2006, 2007).

28. There are disagreements in the literature as to the exact definition of joint action, but they

are irrelevant for the purposes of the discussion. The account used here largely follows

Christopher Kutz. For elaboration of its different components, as well as a good discussion

of alternative accounts, see Kutz (2000).

29. Another example of solidary action, which draws upon John Rawls, is that of an orchestra

playing a piece of music. The players play different parts, some far more prominent than oth-

ers. Nevertheless, we would normally think that they perceive themselves as equal participants

and equal authors of the performance of the piece. See Rawls (1999a: 459 n. 4).

30. It is worth distinguishing here between what I call ‘solidarity action’ and the notion of group

agency. Group agency is also sometimes used in the literature in order to justify an ED of col-

lective consequential responsibility. For example, Dworkin argues implicitly for an ED of

consequential responsibility by suggesting that groups are consequentially responsible for

their actions as separate agents and that their responsibility trickles down to their members

by virtue of their membership. See Dworkin (1990: 336) This line of argument then assumes

the ‘existence of the group as a separate entity or phenomenon’ (Dworkin, 1990: 329). The

argument I develop here does not require such controversial assumptions. We can envision

a group of people (for example, a married couple, a group of scientists working on a shared

project, or a whole nation) whose members are not persuaded by the idea that they somehow

constitute a separate group agent, but who nevertheless perceive their contributions to their

joint projects as equal elements of the overall result.

31. Notice that in the case of domestic partnership, and in other cases, it will not necessarily be a

straightforward task to define what is a joint rather than a private activity of group members. In




the domestic partnership example, the answer to this question will depend on the prevalent

social understanding of this type of partnership, as well as on the specific interpretation of par-

ticular couples. For example, the project of raising children is commonly thought of as a joint

project of the domestic partners. Undoubtedly, there will be cases in which it will be difficult

for the partners to decide whether a certain activity is ‘joint’ or ‘private’ and whether they

should see themselves as having equal shares in it (for example, a debt of one of the partners

which was incurred before they met). But the existence of such borderline cases does not

undermine the claim that there will be a set of activities which are clearly joint and of which

domestic partners are shared authors.

32. I should add that in order to generate genuine obligations, solidary action must be reciprocal,

that is, shared by all members of the group in question. A group member may therefore be

mistaken in her belief that she is acting in solidarity with others if those others do not share

a sense of equal participation with her. Compare Dworkin (1986: 198).

33. My account of solidary action shares some similarities with Larry May’s account of group

action, but also has some important differences. May defines group action, whether structured

or unstructured, as revolving around the notion of solidarity, which, following Jean-Paul

Sarter, May associates with ‘a sufficiently strong common interest’ and a sense of identifica-

tion with the group ‘rather than ... isolated individual identities’. See May (1987: 35). My own

account of acting in solidarity is compatible with May’s in both respects: I agree that when

people act in solidarity they share a common interest (to perform their joint activity) and iden-

tify with their group. However, I add to these two components a third one which May does not

mention. This concerns the willingness to see oneself as an equal participant. In my view, this

is a crucial part of the meaning of acting in solidarity, and perhaps of identifying oneself as a

group member. May would perhaps disagree, as he is a proponent of the PD rather than the ED

of groups’ consequential responsibility, at least in corporations (see note 10 above).

34. This observation opens up the question of how to define a worthy social goal. Generally

speaking, by ‘worthy’ I mean social goals which are worthy in the eyes of participating group

members, but subject to some qualifications of reasonableness. While we should keep a tol-

erant view of worthy social goals, we can nevertheless maintain that some social projects (for

example, those that are based on inherently repulsive or exploitative worldviews) are not

worthy even if their members fail to recognize that fact. For further discussion on this issue,

see Dworkin (1986: 202–6), Hardimon (1994: 344), and Mason (1997: 437–8).

35. Although, I do not wish to deny that there can be transient groups in which the relationship

between members is more intense. In those cases, solidary action would generate meaningful

obligations. I thank Seth Lazar and Ben Saunders for pressing me to clarify this point.

36. This account follows Mason (1997: 440).

37. Other characterizations of the state as an expression of citizens’ shared intentions appear in

Dworkin (2000: 227–8), Gilbert (1993), and Rawls (1993: 204, 1999a: 460–2).

38. On the importance of this deeper connection, see MacIntyre (1995: 224) and Nozick

(2006: 289).

39. The argument leads to the conclusion that the value of acting in solidarity can be manifested

not only in democracies. Members of other types of political communities may also be acting

in solidarity in the sense I have described. This observation is congruent with the intuition

I mentioned in Section 1, according to which subjects of tyrannical and brutal regimes cannot

be expected to share the costs of their rulers’ policies on an equal basis. Such political projects,

Pasternak 207



which are inherently repulsive or exploitative, are not worthy even if their members fail to

recognize that fact.

40. Indeed, it seems that, as a matter of fact, in deeply divided democracies citizens are less

willing to accept an equal distribution of the costs of political injustices. According to my

argument, they are reluctant to do so precisely because they do not value acting in solidarity

with their fellow citizens.

41. The associative obligations argument gives an asymmetrical response to citizens who do not

see any value in the political relationship and to citizens who acknowledge its value, but reject

the specific interpretation of its nature. In the former case, the citizen’s rejection of the rela-

tionship nullifies any obligations that relationship would potentially generate. In the latter

case, the citizen’s skeptical objections of the meaning of the relationship are rejected, in the

sense that the citizen is required to conform with the group’s own interpretation of the AOs

that are generated by it. But if the content of AOs is defined by the group, why cannot the

group also establish the value of membership for its members? The answer to this question

concerns the very nature of participation in a social group. When individuals participate in

a social group they are taking part in a joint project that is reciprocal, at least in the sense that

its meaning is not determined individualistically, but rather through a shared process in which

all group members take part. A citizen who takes part in a political project which she values

must accept that the very nature of that project and of the obligations it generates will be

defined socially. She will take part in this process, but will not be the sole decider. This under-

standing is part of what being in a relationship means. However, if the citizen refuses to take

part in the group project in the first place (that is, if she does not find any value in such social

participation), then the group’s own perception of its value has no hold over her. The fact that

the group declares it has value cannot in and of itself make it valuable to individuals. Rather,

the individuals must be willing at some level to take part in that joint social project. I thank an

anonymous referee for raising this question.

42. Indeed, it can be argued that a comprehensive ED of the burden of political injustice between

all Israeli citizens cannot be defended on normative grounds because a large proportion of

Israel’s population (namely, Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent) do not value their partic-

ipation in the political project of a Jewish state.

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About the author

Avia Pasternak is British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the School of Public Policy, University

College London. She has a DPhil in Politics from Nuffield College, Oxford University.




sharing the costs of political injustices - avia pasternak

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