“It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern state, to ensure by all means necessary, that its Government adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically, but internationally. There are no bystanders. No one is entitled to an ‘apolitical’ exemption from such obligation. Where default occurs, either by citizens endorsement of official criminality or by the failure of citizens to effectively oppose it, liability is incurred by all.” – Ward Churchill
Collective, shared or group responsibility is the equal share of the responsibility each member of a group of people, who makes or implements certain decisions on behalf of a larger group of people, is held accountable for, irrespective of whether the particular member participated actively in the process or not.
It could be defined, in a broader sense, as the “ascription to a group or organisation of something to be done, of doing something, or of answering to something done.” If the board of directors of a company implements a majority decision to fire the union members who went on a strike, then are the directors who were not in agreement with that decision still responsible for the firing?
Decision making
What about the directors who abstained from voting either way? Since a majority of the world population has been conditioned to accept the democratic way of decision making as the best form where the wish of the majority prevails, should the people opposing a particular majority decision also be responsible for the decision, especially if the decision has a harmful effect on the group at the receiving end?
If the Senate or the Council of a university implements a majority decision which turns out to be harmful to the development of the education system of the university hence even to the future of the country, then should all the members of the decision-making body be equally responsible for the decision, irrespective of whether a member was in favor of the decision or not?
In most of the political systems around the world collective responsibility is the convention whereby individual members of the Government are held accountable for the actions and decisions of Government as a whole. This type of collective responsibility calls for the Ministers to have free and open discussions prior to coming to a collective decision and once the Cabinet arrives at a final decision, all Ministers are expected to abide by that position and vote with the Government, or else resign from office.
What Sri Lankans are experiencing at the moment, where one Minister is saying there will not be power cuts and another saying no “scheduled” power cuts while the electricity board is implementing such power cuts, or one Minister saying we do not have a dollar crisis and another saying that he can buy oil if he is given dollars, is more of a tragedy than a comedy.
One might question: Is there such a thing as ‘collective responsibility’? Does it refer to ‘moral’ or ‘causal’ responsibility? Isn’t placing responsibility on some external agency, for sins we have committed or mistakes we have made, a common tendency of human nature?
Thanks to Sigmund Freud, some even would use their own sub conscious as a scapegoat since some of their conscious actions (especially the ones seen by others as ‘bad’) can be due to unconscious motives.
Bad friends
Some parents are quick to place the blame on their child’s friends saying that it is because of those bad friends that their child got involved in a bad activity not thinking about the possibility that the parents of those friends may say the same thing about their children.
It is not uncommon to see defence attorneys using the environmental and even genetic factors in their attempts to bring down the degree of responsibility their client bears, especially in the sentencing phase of a trial, regarding criminal activities the client is convicted of committing.
If a child or a young adult commits suicide or “goespostal” (becomes a mass murderer) since he/she was bullied (ragged) at the school or the university, then are only those few bullies responsible for the loss of lives or should the rest of the student body, the teachers/lecturers, administrators, law makers and law-enforcement agencies/officers equally responsible for failing to provide an environment where such bullying doesn’t take place?
What about the parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, and community leaders including religious leaders of a bully, a criminal, a terrorist, or a corrupt politician? Should they be willing to claim ‘collective responsibility’ for the damages done by one of their family or community members?
If there is room within the criminal justice system to reduce the punishment considering such environmental and/or genetic factors, which essentially then assigns that part of the responsibility of the crime to those factors, shouldn’t the people who are responsible for those factors be punished proportionately?
If the environment can make a person ‘bad’, then doesn’t that automatically imply that the environment should be able to make one a good person too? If so, shouldn’t making the humans in their habitat ‘good people’ be one of the responsibilities of all the stakeholders of that environment?
Criminal justice systems around the world try their best to show that they do not recognise ‘collective responsibility’ unless it can be proven that the members of the group at least had the knowledge of the crime and didn’t alarm the authorities in time.
Isn’t racial profiling, which is common all over the world, based on recognising ‘collective responsibility/guilt’? When members of one ‘gang’ kill those of another, isn’t that due to ‘collective responsibility’? When a ‘good state’ kills a person who has been labeled (by those same good states) as a ‘terrorist’ and his children are also killed in the process, isn’t that evidence of attribution of ‘collective responsibility/guilt’ to those innocent victims?
Could there be a relationship between what is attributed to ‘collateral damage’ during wars and the assumption of ‘collective responsibility/guilt’?
Though we may not want to agree with ‘collective guilt’ and even ‘collective responsibility’ especially regarding criminal activities, we have been subjected to such ideologies more often than we may have realised.
Saving jobs
When insurance companies increase the premium for all their clients due to excessive claims of some in the previous year, aren’t we admitting ‘collective responsibility’ for the total cost to the company? When Governments bail out big companies using taxpayers’ money under the guise of saving jobs and saving the economy of the country, aren’t we admitting ‘collective responsibility’ for the incompetence and/or the corrupt decisions of the leaders of those establishments and/or the politicians who support them?
Considering the crises Sri Lanka is facing at present, there may not be a better time to think about all these questions and find answers so that we can minimise the damage to the country collectively.
Though we may not want to agree with ‘collective guilt’ and even ‘collective responsibility’ especially regarding criminal activities, we have been subjected to such ideologies more often than we may have realised
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]