ABSTRACT
Red tape, excessive regulation or formal rules that are redundant, hinder effective decision making and action, or result in negative outcomes, has become an important area of research that focuses on understanding bureaucracy and constraints in public organizations. For decades, scholars have been engaged in honing definitions, identifying concepts, gathering data, and testing hypotheses, with the goal of developing generalizable information about red tape in organizations. Indeed, the empirical red tape literature is a good example of middle range theory development in public administration. At the same time, there remains a good deal of room for improvement with regard to diversifying methods, developing better reliability, and validity tests for commonly used survey items, assessing multidimensional nature of red tape, capturing stakeholder red tape, and better connecting empirical research to theory and practice. This entry summarizes the history of red tape research in public administration and some of the more recent advances in red tape research.
