1. An administrative system, especially in a government, that divides work into specific devisions: The categories of a bureaucracy are carried out by special departments of non-elected officials.
2. An organizational model that vests, or bestows a power on individuals with authority and spheres of competence: A bureaucracy is set up in a predetermined hierarchy with abstract rules and selection by tests.

A system of government or business which has many complicated rules and ways of doing things all of which slow any effective actions or results; also known as, red tape. (1)