Time to Retire “Bad Apples”

11/05/2025

A plea from Ōtautahi. Can we stop using the phrase “bad apples” when discussing institutional problems? It is a tired cliché that has outlived whatever usefulness it might have once had.

The idiom “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel” initially warned about how quickly rot spreads. Yet in contemporary discussions about institutional accountability, we’ve flipped its meaning to isolate and contain systemic issues.

Political theory and institutional analysis have moved well beyond this simplistic framing.

Ostrom’s (1990) groundbreaking work on institutional design demonstrates how formal and informal rules create governance systems that shape collective behaviour independent of individual intentions. Her institutional analysis framework reveals how nested sets of rules, from operational to constitutional levels, constrain and enable particular patterns of action that persist regardless of personnel changes.

The “bad apples” narrative fails us because it: individualises what are often structural problems; it suggests removing problem individuals will solve institutional failures; absolves systems from meaningful reform and accountability; and ignores how institutions actively shape individual behaviour.

Bazley’s (2007) Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct illustrates this perfectly. Her investigation exposed not just individual officers who abused their power, but institutional factors that enabled misconduct: inadequate oversight mechanisms, cultural norms that discouraged reporting, and accountability structures that protected perpetrators. The patterns she uncovered weren’t explicable through individual pathology alone but required understanding institutional ecology.

DiMaggio and Powell (1983) further illuminate why organisations develop similar dysfunctional patterns through their theory of institutional isomorphism. They identified three mechanisms: coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures, that lead organisations within a field to adopt similar practices, whether beneficial or harmful.

Meanwhile, Lipsky’s (1980) concept of “street-level bureaucracy” explains how frontline workers develop coping mechanisms that can systematically deviate from official policy when facing resource constraints and conflicting demands. The system creates and endorses frontline practice, even when it is ethically dubious and wrong.

What matters in functioning democracies isn’t just addressing individual misconduct but ensuring ongoing consent between institutions and the communities they serve. This consent requires continuous relationship-building, genuine accountability, and recognition of community autonomy.

When we reduce systemic issues to a few problem individuals, we miss opportunities for meaningful reform. We fail to examine how performance metrics might incentivise harmful practices or how selection processes might reinforce existing power dynamics.

After decades of research on institutional behaviour and accountability, we have better frameworks available. It’s time our public discourse reflected this understanding.

Let’s retire “bad apples” and engage with the complex realities of institutional power and responsibility.

References

Bazley, M. (2007). Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct. Wellington, New Zealand: Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct.

DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organisational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147-160.

Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. Russell Sage Foundation.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.