Hierarchy

A group of people who form an ascending chain of power or authority.

Officers in a government, for example, form an escalating series of ranks or degrees of power, with each rank subject to the authority of the one on the next level above. In a majority of hierarchical arrangements, there are a larger number of people at the bottom than at the top.

Originally, the term was used to mean government by a body of priests. Currently, a hierarchy is used to denote any body of individuals arranged or classified according to capacity, authority, position, or rank.

HIERARCHY, eccl. law. A hierarchy signified, originally, power of the priest; for in the beginning of societies, the priests were entrusted with all the power but, among the priests themselves, there were different degrees of power and authority, at the summit of which was the sovereign pontiff, and this was called the hierarchy. Now it signifies, not so much the power of the priests as the border of power.

A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States. By John Bouvier. Published 1856.

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References in periodicals archive

It is true that there was a veneer of seemingly tranquil times which allowed for the gilded life of the elite, but underneath it all were forces that would exploit these tensions and contradictions to mount a despotic challenge to the existing power structure.

Bon Papa: Haiti's Golden Years

It resulted in dismantling a power structure he had established with US and Israeli backing during the war, to be replaced by a Syrian-backed power structure.

On Truth and Justice

THE WESTERN PATRIARCHAL POWER STRUCTURE IS TO BLAME FOR 9/11...

What we believe

Finally, when does Black culture and pop music, the multicultural and diversity rhetoric, truly intervene on the white privileged status quo in challenging the power structure when the music can be so easily commodified and appropriated?

Katrina coverage in Canada

But within Iran's political power structure, important decisions regarding its foreign policy and national security are not made by its president.

"Leave alone," Iranian reformers say

Jan Greenwood has also seen changes in the diversity power structure. As president of the higher ed executive search firm Greenwood & Associates in Miramar Beach, Fla., she recently helped with the vice presidential search at the University of Virginia.

Leaders for all: colleges and universities are naming chief diversity officers to help create lasting change

of Auckland) describes the power structure inherent in public health practice, the objectives of public health in context, the nature of power and empowerment, techniques to help individuals and groups to gain power (in particular marginalized groups), measuring and visually representing power, and making empowerment part of professional practice.

Public health; power, empowerment, and professional practice

At the height of the Depression, he was instrumental in organizing the National Negro Congress, a well-known group stressing key populist solutions, much to the dismay of the established black and white power structure.

A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership

Brownworth summed up the situation for uninsured gays this way: "When you are a member of a minority and you don't have access to the larger power structure, you are screwed."

Insurance insecurity: gay men and lesbians are not only more likely to go without health insurance, they have their own unique set of problems that comes with the lack of proper care