Political Responsibility and Its Challenges

This thesis is focused on defining what political responsibility is and how it is derived and reinforced, with specific focus on contemporary liberal democracies, as they struggle with the notion due to their legalistic nature. The understanding of responsibility often struggles from abstraction that surrounds it. This works attempts to develop rational arguments for the importance of responsibility. First of all, human history and collective memory is not possible without responsibility. Second, liberal democracies depend on political responsibility for its stability. The main theoretical finding of this thesis emphasizes the role of judiciary in promoting and protecting political responsibility. It is proposed that out of all members of a democratic government judges are the most capable of apprehending political responsibility and incorporating it into democratic theory. In addition, this works provides an analysis of some major works in the history of political thought, ranging from ancient Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle to more contemporary thinkers such as Jan Patočka and Jacques Derrida, in order to examine the notion of responsibility under different approaches.