Influence and Responsibility: A Logical Analysis

We present a logical analysis of the relation between social influence and responsibility. In particular, we precisely characterise a notion of influence-based responsibility, namely, a responsibility that depends on the fact that an agent causes a primary violation by another agent. This notion captures the core of the idea of indirect (also called secondary or accomplice) responsibility in legal systems, and can be useful in the governance of multiagent systems. Our analysis uses the STIT logic of action (the logic of seeing to it that). On this basis we shall first formalise a notion of influence between agents, and then the idea of influence-based responsibility.