CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 651Philosophical Ethics and TheoryPublic Policy and Administration ResearchPolitical Philosophy and Ethics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 44 of the 48 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Moral Responsibility of Public Officials: The Problem of Many Hands

Thompson, Dennis F.·1980·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.2307/1954312
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

That many different officials contribute in many different ways to decisions and policies in the modern state makes it difficult to ascribe moral responsibility to any official. The usual responses to this problem—based on concepts of hierarchical and collective responsibility—distort the notion of responsibility. The idea of personal responsibility—based on causal and volitional criteria—constitutes a better approach to the problem of ascribing responsibility to public officials. Corresponding to each of these criteria are types of excuses that officials use in defending the decisions they make. An analysis of the conditions under which the excuses eliminate or mitigate responsibility provides a foundation for accountability in a democracy.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2307/1954312

Cites

44 of 44 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

4 of the 48 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 23

  1. Bok, 1978, Lying
  2. Lowi, 1979, The End of Liberalism
  3. Truman, 1955, Memoirs, Vol. 1, Years of Decisions
  4. 1971, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
  5. Rohr, 1978, Ethics for Bureaucrats
  6. Hobbes, 1962, Leviathan
  7. Glover, 1970, Responsibility
  8. 1975, Watergate
  9. Hart, 1959, Causation in the Law
  10. Sjoberg, 1978, Bureaucratic Power in National Politics
  11. Ashabranner, 1971, A Moment in History
  12. Lukas, 1977, Nightmare
  13. Nelson, 1968, The Politics of Science
  14. Martin, 1966, Overtaken by Events
  15. Aristotle, 1963, The Works of Aristotle
  16. Thompson, 1981, Ethics in Government
  17. Friedlander, 1969, Kurt Cerstein
  18. Weisband, 1976, Resignation in Protest
  19. Kaufman, 1977, Red Tape
  20. Thompson, 1961, Modern Organizations
  21. Strawson, 1968, Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action
  22. Muller, 1967, Adlai Stevenson
  23. Kissinger, 1979, Letters, Economist, 272, 6

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 651

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Thompson, D. F.
Affiliations
Princeton University (US)
Corresponding author
Thompson, Dennis F.
ORCID
Thompson, Dennis F.
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
1980-12
Volume
74
Issue
4
Pages
905-916
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.2307/1954312
OpenAlex
W2017558343
Cited by
651
References
48
Citations by year
2026: 71 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 39 · 2019: 51 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 12
FWCI
11.76
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 12296 d)
Locations
  • American Political Science Review (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
  • Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Philosophy and Ethics
Keywords
moral responsibility, public officials, personal responsibility, collective responsibility, excuses, accountability, democratic accountability, causal criteria, state decision-making

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review