Distributing States' Duties

WE tend to think states have moral duties: duties to alleviate global warming, protect citizens’ moral rights, admit asylum seekers, or wage only just wars. This common-sense view accords with a growing philosophical consensus that states are corporate moral agents, able to bear duties as entities conceptually distinct from—though supervenient upon and constituted by—their members. States have clear membership rules and decision-making procedures that are distinct from the decision-making procedures of members. States are able to act on their decisions, through the actions that their decision-making procedures authorise members to take. States may therefore bear prospective and retrospective responsibility for their decisions and actions. In what follows, I will assume this view is sound. Yet problems remain to be solved, if we are to have a full conception of states’ duties. One problem arises from the following observation: when states fulfil (many of) their obligations, costs are borne by members—that is, by individuals who are subject to the state’s authority. Take the alleviation of global warming. The fulfilment of many obligations states have here—accepting climate refugees, curbing fossil fuel emissions, funding research into green energy—will lead to costs for members—increased demand on public services, increased fossil fuel purchasing taxes, public funds being diverted to develop green energy, and so on. Some of these costs are direct means to, or components of, the discharge of the state’s duty, while others are incurred as an effect of the state discharging its duty. We can consider both kinds of costs together: for both, the discharge of the state’s duty requires that those subject to its authority lose out. And for both, the state