Red tape

"Red tape" refers to excessive or rigid regulations and bureaucracy that hinder decision-making and slow down processes, often seen in governments, corporations, and large organizations. Examples include extensive paperwork, multiple approval layers, and complex rules that complicate tasks. Research in 2021 showed that red tape negatively affects organizational performance and employee wellbeing, especially when the bureaucracy is internal to the organization. A related term, "administrative burden," describes the costs and challenges citizens face when interacting with government, even when procedures have legitimate purposes.

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.^[1]^[2]^[3] 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.^[4] 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.

Origins

Bundle of US pension documents from 1906 bound in red tape

It is generally believed that the term originated with the Spanish administration of Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, in the early 16th century, who started to use red tape in an effort to modernize the administration that was running his vast empire. The red tape was used to bind the most important administrative dossiers that required immediate discussion by the Council of State, and separate them from issues that were treated in an ordinary administrative way, which were bound with ordinary string.^[5]

Although they were not governing such a vast territory as Charles V, this practice of using red tape to separate the important dossiers that had to be discussed was quickly copied by the other modern European monarchs to speed up their administrative machines.

Later history

The tradition continued through to the 17th and 18th century. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens wrote, "Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape." The English practice of binding documents and official papers with red tape was popularized in Thomas Carlyle's^[6] writings, protesting against official inertia with expressions like "Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence". To this day, most defense barristers' briefs, and those from private clients, are tied in a pink-coloured ribbon known as "pink tape" or "legal tape".^{[citation needed]}

20th–21st century

In the late 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, with civil servants using computers and information technology, a legacy from the administration of the Spanish Empire can still be observed where some parts of the higher levels of the Spanish administration continue the tradition of using red tape to bind important dossiers that need to be discussed and to keep them bound in red tape when the dossier is closed. This is, for example, the case for the Spanish Council of State, the supreme consultative council of the Spanish Government. In contrast, the lower Spanish courts use ordinary twine to bundle documents, as their cases are not supposed to be heard at higher levels.^{[citation needed]} The Spanish Government plans^[when?] to phase out the use of paper and abandon the practice of using twine.^{[citation needed]}

As of the early 21st century, Spanish bureaucracy continues to be notorious for unusually extreme levels of red tape (in the figurative sense).^[7] As of 2013, the World Bank ranked Spain 136 out of 185 countries for ease of starting a business, which took on average 10 procedures and 28 days.^[8]

Similar issues persist throughout Latin America.^[7]^[9] For example, Mexico was the original home of Syntex, one of the greatest pharmaceutical firms of the 20th century—but in 1959, the company left for the American city of Palo Alto, California (in what is now Silicon Valley) because its scientists were fed up with the Mexican government's bureaucratic delays which repeatedly impeded their research.^[10] As of 2009 in Mexico, it took six months and a dozen visits to government agencies to obtain a permit to paint a house,^[11] and to obtain a monthly prescription for gamma globulin for X-linked agammaglobulinemia, a patient had to obtain signatures from two government doctors and stamps from four separate bureaucrats before presenting the prescription to a dispensary.^[12]

In the United States, cutting red tape was a central principle of a 1993 National Performance Review study requested by the Clinton Administration.^[13]

Red tape definitions

Red tape can be defined as organisational rules, regulations, and procedures that perform no significant social or administrative function. Formalization and red tape continue in force and result in inefficiency, pointless delays, and frustration.

Another red tape definition adopted in many studies defines it as rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden, but do not advance the legitimate purposes the rules were intended to serve.

Compliance burden, which is the first component of this definition, refers to the effort and time it takes to comply with a rule. Functionality, the second component refers to the perceived degree to which a rule, regulation, or procedure serves the purpose that it is intended to regulate; when it does not, it is red tape versus green tape, a useful rule. Both components—a compliance burden and a lack of functionality—need to be present before a rule can be categorised as red tape.^[14]

According to a postpositivist worldview known as the "functional efficacy approach" or the "benefit-cost view", red tape is determined by observable and objective ineffective formalities in public agencies which means they are dysfunctional for the organisation and not valid for their intended purpose. This notion has emerged on red tape as "rules, regulations and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden for the organisation but have no efficacy for the rules’ functional object".^[15]

Corresponding definitions on red tape have been categorised in two ways:

Organisational red tape: Rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden for the organisation but make no contribution to achieving the rules’ functional objectives.
Stakeholder red tape: Organisational rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden, but serve no objective valued by a given stakeholder group.^[16]

Red tape and regulation

Regulation in essence exists to create public value and brings value particularly for citizens affected by unfair trading, monopolies, externalities and market failures; and from businesses who gain from regulation in the form of market protection, subsidies, and title protection — those who want regulation to create the certainty they need to go about their business decisions.^[17]

In regulatory reviews and in the public debate about regulation, the term "red tape" may be used interchangeably with "regulation". However, red tape and regulation are not the same thing — the difference being that the former is a term used to describe regulatory requirements that exceed "the minimum amount of intervention necessary to tackle an identified social or economic problem".^[17]

The neoliberal revolution of the 1970s and early 1980s, led by US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, identified the state as the major culprit for "stagflation" – the combination of high unemployment, high inflation, and low economic growth. Government’s role, it was argued, should be steering, not rowing. Governments were seen as costly, inefficient, ineffective, risk-averse, coercive, and captured by rent seekers and sectional interests.^[17]

In Australia, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been echoing these sentiments, describing the growth of the "regulatory state" as evidence of an attempt to undermine Australian democracy and a threat to democratic, judicial, parliamentary and administrative systems of control. Increasing use of legislative instruments and quasi-legislation, referred to as "regulatory dark matter", is viewed as an assault on democratic accountability. Australia is claimed to have a "red tape crisis" caused by an "avalanche" of regulation.^[17]

A review by researchers at Victoria University stated that the conflation of regulation with red tape, intentional or not, will not yield regulatory improvement.^[17] It stated that any government's starting point should be that regulation is seen as an asset and not a liability.

Defining and measuring red tape

Red tape is often used interchangeably with regulation or compliance generally. In the context of political "wars on red tape", commentary which focuses on the origins and purpose of regulation notes that regulation can arise from a number of sources. These can include responses to market failures or incidents, citizen pressure, and non-governmental organisation campaigns. A "war on red tape" is therefore considered inherently political and relates to different perspectives on the function of regulation and of the role of the state in society and the appropriate relationship between government, business, and the community.^[18]

Measures of red tape can either attempt to calculate the costs of the activities imposed by regulation, or can attempt to quantify the size of the issue by reference to the number of regulation, legislative instruments, or the number of licences or permits that exist in reference to a certain sector. However, this sort of analysis which counts words or instruments are considered "crude ways of measuring the burden of regulation". They can conflate simple administrative tasks with complex or byzantine registration systems and can also conflate legitimate regulatory activities with red tape, given the subjectivity of whether a requirement is or is not red tape.^[18]

The ability of the public service to quantify the benefits and costs of regulation is also fraught; a narrow focus on cost-efficiency in regulation may obscure or discount other values such as transparency, accountability, and equity. Regulatory Impact Statements or analyses are therefore potentially compromised or problematic where they take a narrow perspective.

Red tape reduction

The expression "cutting of red tape" generally refers to a reduction of bureaucratic obstacles to action. Public administration scholars have studied the impact of red tape on public servants through research on administrative performance, behavioral impact, and rule quality.^[19]

Business representatives often claim red tape is a barrier to business, particularly small business. In Canada, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business^[20] has done extensive research^[21] into the impact of red tape on small businesses. ’As of 2018, small businesses were subject to 15,875 regulatory requirements from Health Canada, 1,808 from the Canada Revenue Agency and 4,519 from Finance Canada. According to data compiled by the federal government, a total of 136,121 federal requirements were imposed on businesses, in addition to provincial requirements. The Canadian government’s One-for-One rule recommends that regulators offset new costs in the two years following the implementation of new regulation. From 2012 to 2018, 131 individual regulations were eliminated by Ottawa, reducing the administrative burden by $30.6 million. However, during that same time period, 76 new regulations were exempted from the One-for-One rule.^[22]

The European Commission has a competition that offers an award for the "Best Idea for Red Tape Reduction". The competition is "aimed at identifying innovative suggestions for reducing unnecessary bureaucracy stemming from European law".^[23] In 2008, the European Commission held a conference entitled "Cutting Red Tape for Europe". The goal of the conference was "reducing red tape and overbearing bureaucracy", in order to help "business people and entrepreneurs improve competitiveness".^[24]

Beyond actual reductions to red tape, some evidence suggests that applying rules consistently and fairly can positively affect the extent to which citizens perceive that red tape exists in a government agency.^[25]

Australian analysis indicates that while red tape is often described as highly costly for businesses, there are complexities to how this is calculated. Assumptions about the costs of red tape may not always take into account the benefits of regulation; it is important to distinguish between the costs of compliance per se and the costs of red tape, which may be a subset of compliance. Analysis of the costs of red tape are often compiled by those who bear the costs, and Australian research indicates that these are often picked up and repeated uncritically, for example by media, and that assumptions are therefore often untested.^[18]

Administrative burden

"Administrative burden" is a related concept to "red tape".^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29] Whereas red tape suggests that regulations do not serve legitimate purposes, the concept of administrative burden recognizes that regulations that are intended for good purposes may nonetheless entail a burden.^[26] Administrative burden can be defined as "the learning, psychological, and compliance costs that citizens experience in their interactions with government".^[30] Sometimes these costs are seen as legitimate or necessary if they achieve important public values without creating too onerous a burden for citizens.^[31]

However, administrative burden can exacerbate inequality when it is not evenly distributed or when it affects people differently.^[32] For example, the Khawaja Sira in Pakistan—individuals who are "culturally identified as neither men nor women"—face psychological costs of discrimination and unusually high compliance costs when they attempt to obtain legal IDs.^[33] Historically exploited or marginalized individuals might choose not to seek out benefits for which they are eligible, drop out of government programs, or have negative interactions with bureaucrats as a result of unequal administrative burdens.^[34]^[35]^[36] Depending on the benefit area and the level of burden experienced, these consequences could have negative effects on individuals' health, employment, and wellbeing.^[37] Existing societal inequalities also increase the likelihood that vulnerable individuals experience administrative burdens in the first place based on their identity and the benefits they are seeking (e.g., maternity leave or childcare benefits).^[38]^[39] There is some evidence that perceptions of deservingness might influence politicians' willingness to either passively allow administrative burdens or actively create them through policy design; this theory has equity implications if members of marginalized groups are seen as less deserving.^[40]

Perceptions of red tape and union involvement

Regulation may be perceived as either red tape or legitimate by any party: customers, the public, the responsible agency, and employees whose role it is to enforce regulation. Research has found that where union members spend time in formal union meetings and settings, they may internalise union perspectives on issues such as processes and procedures, many of which are intended to benefit union members. Where members internalise these values, they may be more likely to perceive regulations or rules as beneficial, rather than as red tape. In the public service context, this may be valuable, as these members will be responsible for enforcing or implementing rules. Where members perceive the rules as valuable, they are more likely to voluntarily comply with or enforce them, which is like to be more efficient than "forced" compliance.^[41]

Red tape and job satisfaction

The job demands–resources model provides a useful framework to understand how red tape impacts public service employees job satisfaction. ^[42] Job demands are tasks that require the physical and mental capacity of employees, with a focus on their attitudes and behaviour. Job resources on the other hand relates to aspects within the work environment the support employees in their development, coping and goal achievement.^[43]

Red tape is characterised as a "job demand" which costs energy for workers, and reduces their job satisfaction. It is further characterised as a factor which reduces "job contact", i.e. interactions with clients or time spent on what workers perceive as core business. Red tape also reduces "job impact", as it can reduce flexibility and autonomy in carrying out tasks which affects how workers perceive their ability to have an influence in their job. Together, these describe the impact of red tape on job satisfaction for some public service employees in prosocial roles.^[44]

Red tape can also cause employees to lose motivation, which may consequently lead to burnout.^[43] This can be caused when employees are faced with increased compliance burden due to public servants losing their autonomy and sense of competence that may be an essential source of motivation.^[43]

Other examples of how red tape can impact job satisfaction include:

For employers wanting to provide their employees with career development opportunities, internal red tape through increased rules and procedures also increases the controlling behaviour of organisational leaders and prevents them from supporting their employ.
For frontline employees, internal red tape can impact their job satisfaction when they are spending less time servicing the public due to spending more time.^[43]

The increased uptake of technology within the public service is an example of where red tape can affect the job satisfaction of employees.^[43] Although technology is recognised as a tool that can improve efficiencies and performance, it can also hinder employees if they are not provided with the adequate support (job resources) to be able to take on a change in their role and responsibilities and expectations, and do well.^[43] If employees perceive the changes in requirements to their job and day to day tasks as burdensome or not improving their ability to do their job, this is categorised as red tape.^[43]

The compliance burden that may come with introducing new technology can also cause employees to experience mental fatigue if challenges are being experienced regularly. Consequently, this can cause employees to disengage with their work and colleagues.^[43]

Research conducted into experiences of public-school teachers and leaders in Belgium found that when employees are faced with high levels of red tape as the result of utilising digital tools, they were more likely to experience emotional exhaustion and therefore have higher turnover intention.^[43] This emphasises the importance of considering the impact job demands can have on the mental wellbeing of employees if they are not provided with adequate support. In Switzerland, a study also found that the time public managers are required to put into complying with regulations, performance targets and measurements is positively linked to stress levels.^[43]

In 2022, the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford conducted a study into the influence red tape has on public service manager burnout in Chile.^[42] This study included 354 school principles in Chile in order to understand the risks of burnout among public service managers as a result of red tape. This study found that when public managers experienced increased levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and a low sense of personal accomplishment when they are advised of potential increases to the level of regular compliance tasks they were required to undertake.^[42] This is due to public service managers not being provided with adequate support to do a good job.

In 2020, the Canadian Government released the Blueprint 2020 report, which brought together insights from engagements with over 2,000 public servants about their experiences with internal red tape.^[45] This report found that internal red tape is a significant issue for public servants. Key barriers identified by public servants in relation to red tape included having unclear direction on the rules, policies and guidelines and poor internal client service.^[45]

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