Within social structures there are particular ‘positions’ associated with certain roles. It is particularly important to distinguish the occupant of a position from the position itself. One of the most pervasive illusions of everyday thinking derives from the attribution of the properties of the position, be they good or bad, to the individual or institution occupying it. Whatever effects result, it is assumed that particular people must be responsible; there is little appreciation that the structure of social relations, together with their associated resources constraints or rules, may determine what happens, even though these structures only exist where people reproduce them. In such circumstances it is futile to expect problems to be resolved by the discovery of a guilty persons and their replacement by a different individual. We may question individuals in a structure in the hope of finding someone to blame or credit for certain outcomes without ever finding one where ‘the buck stops’. As Andre Gorz writes
The predefined obligations inherent in [the bureaucrats'] function[s] relieve them of all personal responsibility and decision and enable them to meet the protest with the disarming reply: ‘We haven’t chosen to do this. We’re only enforcing orders.’ Whose orders? Whose regulations? One could go back indefinitely up the hierarchy and it would still be impossible to find anyone else to say, ‘Mine’
Gorz is not attacking the evasion of individual responsibility but its non-existence in such cases. Failure to recognize the existence of internal relations and structures can also be seen in the example of responses to criticism of the police. This is sometimes expressed and interpreted in terms of the presence of ‘bad apples’ in the force, that is, as criticism of particular members of the police. Even when criticism is explicitly directed against the structures of positions, rules and powers which make up the institution of the police, it is sometimes – perhaps deliberately – misconstrued as being directed against individuals.
Source: Method in Social Science by Andrew Sayer, Pages 92-94
