Group agency is the idea that groups can be agents in their own right. According to group-agent realists, these groups have intentional and reflective states that are irreducible to those of their individual members. Group-agent realists therefore see these groups as autonomous from their individual group members.
Christian List and Philip Pettit defend group-agent realism on the basis of recent results in social choice theory. Aggregating the complete and consistent attitudes of each group member towards logically interconnected propositions might lead to inconsistent collective attitudes. For example, if the group members submit their attitudes towards the three propositions p, q, and ‘p and q‘, they might collective judge in favour of p and q separately but then reject ‘p and q‘ conjunctively. Solving this problem, List and Pettit argue, requires giving the group the capacity to reject its members’ attitudes, thus forming its own attitudes on certain propositions. With this capacity, the group will function as an agent, in List and Pettit’s view, as it autonomously forms and reflects on its own attitudes.
I challenge group-agent realism in a series of published papers. I point out an important difference between groups and individuals that group-agent realists do not fully appreciate. Within groups, individuals behave strategically and might misrepresent their beliefs in order to bring about the collective judgments they desire. By doing so, they take a control of their group and undermine the idea of an autonomous group agent. By treating the group as an irreducible agent, we overlook this significant behaviour within the group. I demonstrate this point by showing how strategic voting can lead to the same outcome regardless of which procedure that is applied at the group-level. Group members, and not the ‘group agent’, are therefore in control of collective decision making.
The next step in this project is to consider implications for collective, or corporate, responsibility. Pettit argues that groups can satisfy three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for responsibility. They can (1) make normatively significant decisions, and they have (2) access to relevant information and (3) the control required for autonomously choosing between options. I show how group members’ strategic behaviour undermines groups’ ability to satisfy the second and third conditions. By behaving strategically, the group members can provide their group with false information and take control of the group’s decision making by ensuring it makes decisions in accordance with their preferences.
These are my published papers on group agency so far:
2024. Against Corporate Responsibility. Journal of Social Philosophy 55(1): 44–61.
2024. Collectivizing Public Reason. Social Theory and Practice 50(2): 285–306.
2024. Collective Agency and Positive Political Theory. Journal of Theoretical Politics 36(1): 83–98.
2023. Eliminating Group Agency. Economics and Philosophy 39(1): 43–66.
2023. Groups as Fictional Agents. Inquiry. Published online.
2019. Redundant Group Agency. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 49(5): 364–384.