Paperwork Trap

The term “red tape” typically applies to bureaucratic or administrative frictions that inflate the time or resource costs of completing some kind of process.

So if you want to make a new law, but rules are changed so that it takes a year rather than a week just to get the ball rolling on that process, you may be less likely to try to do so.

Similarly, if you want to build new housing and there are a bunch of regulations that stand between you and a finished apartment building, it’s possible you’ll invest your money elsewhere because every additional bit of paperwork, and every additional cost—money- and time-related—add to both the headache and the final price tag of your investment.

At some point, that red tape may increase the cost of building housing to the point that few people or businesses even try to do so because they can no longer recoup their investment. They may also only build high-end structures for people with a lot of money to spend, because that’s the only way they stand a chance of making back what they put into the construction.

Lawmakers who are stymied by a quagmire of procedural rules may likewise seek out alternatives, aiming to adjust existing laws rather than introducing new ones, or opting to reinterpret, challenge, or find creative ways around those that are currently on the books, rather than opting to wade through the morass of passing a new law—even if that latter option would be better by most metrics if eventually successful.

Sometimes red tape emerges out of otherwise well-intended actions, like environmentalists who want to protect ecosystems who accidentally, over the course of decades, support so many construction regulations that they impede the development of inexpensive housing in areas where such development is desperately needed.

In other cases, though, red tape is used strategically by people, organizations, and administrations that hope to achieve a particular outcome.

The term “Paperwork Trap” is sometimes used to describe the bureaucratic red tape people encounter when trying to access government resources.

If you’re attempting to use a safety net program but are unable to navigate all the paperwork required to get signed up (and if you know that you’ll have to navigate all that paperwork again and again, to keep your place in the program, if you are eventually successful), that may keep you from accessing and benefitting from those resources—there are too many hoops to jump through, and too much uncertainty involved.

This is also sometimes called “Administrative Burden,” though this term is inclusive of not just the paperwork burden, but also the psychological, educational, and social burdens associated with some types of red tape.

It can be emotionally difficult to go through these sorts of processes when you’re already low on money, can’t afford rent, and/or are suffering from a chronic medical condition. You may also have to do a bunch of research just to figure out how to get the resources you’d like to access, and you may also be embarrassed about needing to tap those resources just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

These are all burdensome elements of some such programs, and the addition of abundant paperwork (alongside rules that deny access if one field on one piece of paper isn’t filled-out or filed correctly) can amplify all of those issues, while also reducing the use of these programs (the same general strategy is sometimes used to keep some groups of people from voting by administrations that don’t think those groups will vote for them).

That reduction in resource-use or voter-turnout is sometimes the point.

Paperwork traps and other such administrative burdens allow politicians (or CEOs, or other sorts of leaders) to seem to support social safety nets, voter rights, and the like, while in practice cutting back on their use or availability.