Red tape

Idiom for excessively bureaucratic procedures or regulations

Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large organizations. Things often described as "red tape" include filling in paperwork, obtaining licenses, having multiple people or committees approve a decision and various low-level rules that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, or both. Red tape has been found to hamper organizational performance and employee wellbeing across countries and contexts by a meta-analysis and meta-regression in 2021, and especially internal red tape imposed by the organization itself on its employees was identified as particularly harmful. A related concept, administrative burden, refers to the costs citizens may experience in their interaction with government even if bureaucratic regulations or procedures serve legitimate purposes.

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