bureaucracy.

1. An organization or system managed through officials, rules, and defined procedures.

2. Excessive or inflexible administrative rules that hinder action.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• public bureaucracy
• administrative bureaucracy

On the page

The public bureaucracy coordinated permits across several departments.

Usage notes

Primary category: economics / business / social science. Forms: Countable or uncountable by context; countable singular bureaucracy; plural bureaucracies. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: analysis, evaluation, social science. Commonness: moderately common.