1. As Larry May concisely puts the matter, "In order to determine whether or not a group has engaged in collective action, one has to determine whether or not that group has engaged in actions as a group, that is, actions that were facilitated by some aspect of the group's structure" (Larry May,Sharing Responsibility[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992]). While collective action seems clearly a matter of structure, collective responsibility need not be.
2. Responsibility Incorporated
3. I acknowledge that we commonly default to moral responsibility, of the agentive sort, when we speak of responsibility in this context (see e.g., Keith Graham, "Imposing and Embracing Collective Responsibility: Why the Moral Difference?"Midwest Studies in Philosophy30 [2006]: 256-68). Part of the purpose of this paper is to put pressure on this tendency, a tendency explicit in Pettit's "Responsibility Incorporated" and Peter French'sCollective and Corporate Responsibility(New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
4. Examples of this sort put pressure on French's claim that a formal decision procedure is a necessary precondition for the assignment of collective responsibility. See hisCollective and Corporate Responsibility.