Red Tape: Its Origins, Uses, and Abuses

by Herbert Kaufman

Death, taxes, and red tape. The inevitable trio no one can escape. That wry sense of reality colors Herbert Kaufman's classic study of red tape, the bureaucratic phenomenon that all of us have encountered in some form—from the confounding tax form filled out annually to the maddeningly time-consuming wait at the driver's license bureau.

The complaints about red tape, Kaufman concedes, are legion. It's messy, it takes too long, it lacks local knowledge, it is out of date, it makes insane demands, it increases costs, it slows progress. It is, in short, a burden and many times there is no measurable positive outcome.

Kaufman takes us on an unblinking tour of the dismal landscape of red tape. But he also shows us another side of red tape, one we often forget. Red tape is how government protects us from tainted food, shoddy products, and unfair labor practices. It guarantees a social safety net for the elderly, the disabled, children, veterans, and victims of natural disasters. One person's red tape is another person's protection.

This reissue is a Brookings Classic, a series of republished books for readers to revisit or discover, notable works by the Brookings Institution Press.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Government, Political Science

132 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1977

Reviews

[Twagner]

Simple explanations of how the world works and why. Extremely balanced - it praises red tape and explains all the reasons it grows and isn't so simple to be rid of, while acknowledging the goal is to have as little as possible. It's at the perfect level of abstraction: it's explanations are evergreen while being very grounded in practical realities. A masterpiece of a book. Doesn't outstay its welcome.

[Michael Del Camp]

Not sure this is the book I read, but if so, it is a greatly useful book on bureacracies, red tape, and how they have related to public administration and governance in many historical instances. I read this book for a course I took in public administration, circa 1982, and this is one book that really impressed me, and stayed with me during the ensuing years. Another couple of books I cannot find, that similarly impressed me greatly, were "Choice Points" something about fight or flight and other dipolar choices we all make in our human lives, a social psychology text of around 100 pages or so; and "Class, State and Crime" a truly great survey book with critical analyses of crime and punishment rules, regulations, laws and traditions, and how we got to where we are today. The Author was rumored to be a Marxist, but I found his incisive, "outside the box" thinking refreshing and bracing. If you want to rethink what you think on this subject matter area, from top to bottom, short of grabbing a French Intellectual's book in translation, this is the book for you.

[Miriam]

Considering the subject, the book is remarkably short. There's one chapter on what it is, one on why we have it, and one on why we ain't gonna get rid of it any time soon. The topic, tied so closely to the idea of shrinking government, is also quite current since many of Trump's appointees seem to disapprove of the purpose of the agencies they are nominated to head. It will be interesting to see if they can make any headway or if Howard is right that they will only end up generating still more red tape.

[Samantha]

Read this for my public administration course. Not bad for a political science book. Also, being that it's really the only book that gives an objective (not purely negative) perspective about the origins and uses of red tape in our government it's a good read. It's dated, but still relevant.

[Spencer Willardson]

An interesting book. Very short, but very good. I got a lot of insight into bureaucracy overall.