Meaning of bureaucracy in English

bureaucracy

mainly disapproving

/bjʊəˈrɒk.rə.si/ us

/bjʊˈrɑː.krə.si/

a system for controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by a large number of officials employed to follow rules carefully:

I had to deal with the university's bureaucracy when I was applying for financial aid.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Managing and organizing

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(Definition of bureaucracy from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

bureaucracy | American Dictionary

bureaucracy

noun [ C/U ]

/bjʊˈrɑk·rə·si/

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politics & government

the officials, employees, and people who run government departments and offices, or similar officers and employees who manage the details of operating a large business:

[ C ] The city’s bureaucracy is almost unmanageable.

politics & government

disapproving Bureaucracy is also official rules that make it difficult to do things:

[ U ] The president wants to add more bureaucracy to our daily lives.

(Definition of bureaucracy from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

bureaucracy | Business English

bureaucracy

noun

/bjʊəˈrɒkrəsi/ us

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[ C ] MANAGEMENT plural bureaucracies

a system for controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by officials who are employed to follow rules carefully:

a government/state/federal bureaucracy These regulations have no benefit except to support a large government bureaucracy.

[ U ] WORKPLACE disapproving

complicated rules, processes, and written work that make it hard to get something done:

We need to avoid creating another layer of bureaucracy.

avoid/eliminate/reduce bureaucracy

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adhocracy

(Definition of bureaucracy from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of bureaucracy

bureaucracy

This new political climate fundamentally altered the nature of the relationship between the bureaucracy and elected officials.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The central bureaucracy was poorly equipped to deal with the stream of complaints and requests for adjudication and clarification pouring in from the provinces.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Access to government positions is conditional upon explicit support of the ruling party for appointments in the lower echelon bureaucracy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Within the bureaucracy of the multi-tiered health service, there was little prospect of them exercising any real user influence.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It also sought to restructure the existing health bureaucracy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Individual decisions to insulate agencies from presidential control collectively and cumulatively are making the bureaucracy more difficult for presidents to manage over time.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Of twenty-four administrative elite interviewees, the apparatchiki accounted for fourteen, and two others were inherited from the pre-1991 state bureaucracy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The most ominous form was government-sponsored health insurance, with its threat of intrusive federal bureaucracies.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Bureaucracy and regulations were, and are, fundamentally a response to rising costs, growing complexity of activity, and a growing number of obligations to fulfil.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because bureaucracies know more than their principals about the work they have been ' contracted' to do, information is asymmetrical.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Providing patronage opportunities often comes at the expense of setting up professional bureaucracies and the efficient running of a program.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The bits of bureaucracy that mattered were run by important princes or by commoners very close to the court.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Delegation of authority to organisations outside the government bureaucracy will only be done when there is enough assurance that it will not create problems.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Gompers viewed the notion of industrial commissions as an effort by intellectuals to establish a bureaucracy that would oversee workers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Additionally, civil service bureaucracies can be expanded and disbanded 'to task', according to the circumstances that arise.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with bureaucracy

bureaucracy

These are words often used in combination with bureaucracy.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

bloated bureaucracy

Paradoxically, democracy fosters division, the climate of 'rights' proposed by organized groups and corruption at even the most modest levels of the bloated bureaucracy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

central bureaucracy

The central bureaucracy was poorly equipped to deal with the stream of complaints and requests for adjudication and clarification pouring in from the provinces.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

cumbersome bureaucracy

I agree that we do not want to have cumbersome bureaucracy standing in the way of delivery.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

See all collocations with bureaucracy

What is the pronunciation of bureaucracy?

Translations of bureaucracy

in Chinese (Traditional)

官僚作風, 官僚主義, 官僚體制…

Meaning of bureaucracy in English

bureaucracy | American Dictionary

bureaucracy | Business English

Compare

Examples of bureaucracy

Collocations with bureaucracy

bureaucracy

Translations of bureaucracy

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