Red tape is excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations and other large organizations.
One definition is the "collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming". Another definition is the "bureaucratic practice of hair splitting or foot dragging, blamed by its practitioners on the system that forces them to follow prescribed procedures to the letter".
Red tape generally includes filling out 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 can also include "filing and certification requirements, reporting, investigation, inspection and enforcement practices, and procedures".
Read more about Red Tape: Origins, Red Tape Reduction
Famous quotes related to red tape:
“We have fought too much rhetoric and red tape to be lulled and comforted by a paid political advertisement showing a candidate tossing his grandchild in the air while a disembodied voice espouses ‘family values’ in the background.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“I spent my life mixin’ with your breed, and I don’t like it. Get me. You can hide behind a lot of red tape, crooked lawyers and politicians with the gimmes, writs of habeas corpus, witnesses that don’t remember overnight, but we’ll get through to you, just like we got all the rest.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)