zombie institution

plural zombie institutions

1. Synonym of zombie business.

   If a bank's NW_E declines through zero, it becomes a "zombie” institution.

   2015, Allen N. Berger, Philip Molyneux, John O. S. Wilson, The Oxford Handbook of Banking, page 510

   3 more examples

   The problem is aggravated even further by the absence of any reliable mechanism to close down zombie institutions before they can inflict too much damage on other parties.

   1993, Kevin Dowd, Laissez Faire Banking, page 301

   I do not think that any major U.S. bank is currently a zombie institution. They are all lending, they are all active, and they are all viable.

   2010, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Budget, Economic and Budget Challenges for the Short and Long Term, page 27

   The first thing it says is: Do not practice discretionary forbearance, turning a blind eye in the vain hope that a failing firm's red ink will happily turn to black, that a zombie institution will come back to life, that toxic assets will detoxify themselves.

   2014, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Financial Services. Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, The Fed Turns 100

   Synonyms: zombie business

2. Synonym of zombie organization.

   The rewards for going along to get along serve the zombie institution.

   2023, Petra Mikulan, Michalinos Zembylas, Working with Theories of Refusal and Decolonization in Higher Education, page 2016

   4 more examples

   In my youth, sad to say, my closest encounter with a zombie institution seemed to be the Department of Motor Vehicles, where employees dulled by low expectations slowly and sullenly served frustrated citizens under pallid fluorescent lights.

   2013, Andy Crouch, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, page 199

   That is what it is like to learn in a zombie institution: thinking long-gone, and only the admin jobs remaining.

   2017, Sinead Murphy, Zombie University: Thinking Under Control

   Leading realists thus predicted that after 1990 the Alliance would collapse or become a zombie institution, that is, surviving in name only, given that the existential military threat melted away after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (Waltz 1993, p. 76).

   2023, Sebastian Mayer, Research Handbook on NATO, page 358

   Commonly, the image of death has taken hold operationally, with the existence of the G20 at most being equated as a 'zombie' institution continuing to operate, but without signs of influential life.

   2024, Andrew F. Cooper, The Concertation Impulse in World Politics, page 317

   Synonyms: zombie organization

3. An institution (custom or practice) that has lost its relevance or meaning.

   In the words of Ulrich Beck, the church may be considered another example of a 'zombie institution', like family, class and neighborhood.

   2007, Heinz Streib, Religion Inside and Outside Traditional Institutions, page 183

   2 more examples

   These statistics are, for some, indicative of how processes of detraditionalization and individualization have made marriage a "zombie” institution.

   2009, Jodi O'Brien, Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, page 2

   It is in this context that Ulrich Beck can ask whether the contemporary family is a 'zombie institution', which is 'dead and still alive': Ask yourself what actually is a family nowadays? What does it mean?

   2017, Nicholas White, French Divorce Fiction from the Revolution to the First World War

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see zombie, institution.

   Trying to orient the self that my ass was busy trying to save as it hauled me through the corridors of this bloody zombie institution .

   2020, Albert Aykler, Just Say Zombie: A Pre-Apocalypse Madhouse Zombie Novel