We say that a collection \Cc of subsets of X is {\em bureaucratic} if
every maximal hierarchy on X contained in \Cc is also maximum. We
characterise bureaucratic set systems and show how they arise in phylogenetics.
This framework has several useful algorithmic consequences: we generalize some
earlier results and derive a polynomial-time algorithm for a parsimony problem
arising in phylogenetic networks.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur