Red Tape: Its Origins, Uses, and Abuses.

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1977. Hardback small octavo, dustjacket, very good condition (in very good dustjacket), cloth spine, top edge foxed (other edges slightly), rear pastedown little foxed, minor edgewear. 102 pp. Herbert Kaufman asks why bureaucratic red tape is rarely discussed analytically. Why does something so universally detested flourish? Part is definition: each of us applies it to our own pet grievances, which may differ from those of other people. However, there is a common core of meaning, as identified in the first part of the book. The second part searches for the origins of red tape in the US federal government, and finds the source not in a clique of fools or villains, but in all of us. Red tape springs from the diversity of values to which people in our society subscribe, from the demands on government to which these values give rise, and from the responsiveness of the government to the demands. Proposals for eliminating it are found wanting in this regard - they may even generate as much red tape as they cut. A more fruitful policy would be to remove the worst of red tape's irritants, to make bearable what we cannot end. The author is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.