CONCEPT
Political Responsibility
The forward-looking, shared, non-dischargeable obligation to transform unjust structures — distinguished sharply from guilt, blame, and private moral feeling.
Political responsibility, in Young's usage, is the specific form of obligation that structural injustice generates. It is not moral responsibility in the sense of fault; it is political responsibility in the sense of participation in a shared institutional order whose outcomes demand collective response. It is forward-looking because its object is structural change, not restitution for past wrongs. It is shared because structures cannot be transformed by individuals acting alone. And it is non-dischargeable because structures persist; as long as the institutional arrangement continues to produce injustice, the responsibility to transform it continues to bind.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept does specific work that the moral-philosophical vocabulary of guilt, duty, and virtue cannot do. Guilt attaches to what individuals did; political responsibility attaches to what collectives must do. Duty implies a clear beneficiary and a discrete performance; political responsibility implies sustained institutional engagement with uncertain outcomes. Virtue concerns the shape of a life; political responsibility concerns the shape of a polity. Young insisted that political philosophy had neglected this category, and that