The Diffusion of Responsibility in World Politics

The subject of the paper is the diffusion of responsibility in international politics. Ongoing debates on the ‘responsibility to protect’, the ‘international responsibility of states and international organizations’ as well as ‘corporate responsibility’ underline the status of responsibility as a key term of contemporary international politics. Yet, even though the relevance of responsibility as an international expectation has increased, it seems that the actual assignment of who is accountable and in which sense has become more difficult. Today, the state as the solely accountable actor in international relations has been supplemented by further individual and collective as well as national and transnational actors, which are able to bear international responsibility. This proliferation of actors as well as the settings, in which they organize (in formal or, increasingly, informal networks), make it hardly possible to hold an individual or collective actor accountable and responsibility diffuses. The article systematizes the patterns of diffusion of responsibility in international politics and discusses three dimensions based on subjects, objects, and normative frameworks. It illustrates theoretical assumptions on all three dimensions with empirical examples. On the subject dimension, it focuses on the interaction between formal and informal networks like the G7/8 settings. With regard to the object dimension, it discusses the consequences of technological advances: current military conflicts reveal that not only institutional agencies but also technologically connected networks (IT, Internet, UAV-Technologies) impede the attribution of responsibilities. On the normative framework dimension, the diffusion of responsibility is virulent in the debate on the interaction of formal state and informal non-state legal regimes like courts of arbitration in the area of trade policy.