The previous chapters have worked through the history and theory of specialresponsibilities and provided an empirical analysis in three differentdomains of global governance. It now remains to explore the ethics ofspecial responsibilities. We offer an initial, and tentative, account thatwe consider both ethically compelling, and also largely consistent with thepreceding sociological history. Here our primary task is to elucidate anddefend the ethical basis for the assignment of special responsibilities toparticular states or other actors. What claims to special responsibilitiesare justified? Given that one of our core sociological arguments has beenthat special responsibilities are domain specific, then we might expect thatthe ethical justification for the allocation of special responsibilitieswould be similarly so. We certainly show this to be the case when we explorethe specific content and application of ethical principles in the domains ofnuclear weapons, climate change and global finance. It nonetheless remainsan open, and interesting, question whether there are some core or commonprinciples, a recognisable family of arguments, or at least a common moralgrammar that would apply to all the cases.

There are two possible methodological routes to exploring this possibility.The first is to develop specific ethical arguments for each of our threecase studies, and then see if there are sufficient commonalities to allowdevelopment of universal ethical claims. The second is to begin bydeveloping general ethical arguments for the allocation of specialresponsibilities in world politics, and then applying them to each of thecase studies. Both routes would enable an exploration of the extent to whichour ethical arguments formed part of the actual allocation, or subsequentcontestation, of special responsibilities in the three cases. We opt for thesecond route because it is more interesting and challenging, and likely tobe of broader interest to normative International Relations (IR)theorists.