bureaucracy

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Administration of a government chiefly through bureaus or departments staffed with nonelected officials.
2. n. The departments and their officials as a group: promised to reorganize the federal bureaucracy.
3. n. Management or administration marked by hierarchical authority among numerous offices and by fixed procedures: The new department head did not know much about bureaucracy.
4. n. The administrative structure of a large or complex organization: a midlevel manager in a corporate bureaucracy.
5. n. An administrative system in which the need or inclination to follow rigid or complex procedures impedes effective action: innovative ideas that get bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Government by bureaus; specifically, excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in, administrative bureaus. The principle of bureaucracy tends to official interference in many of the properly private affairs of life, and to the inefficient and obstructive performance of duty through minute subdivision of functions, inflexible formality, and pride of place.
2. n. The body of officials administering such bureaus, considered collectively.

Wiktionary

1. n. Structure and regulations in place to control activity. Usually in large organizations and government operations.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A system of carrying on the business of government by means of departments or bureaus, each under the control of a chief, in contradiction to a system in which the officers of government have an associated authority and responsibility; also, government conducted on this system.
2. n. Government officials, collectively; -- used especially of nonelected government officials.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. nonelective government officials
2. n. a government that is administered primarily by bureaus that are staffed with nonelective officials
3. n. any organization in which action is obstructed by insistence on unnecessary procedures and red tape