Social hierarchy

Social hierarchy is a multi-tiered pyramid-like social or functional structure having an apex as the centralization of power. The term can also be applied to animal societies, but the term dominance hierarchy is preferred most times. Typically, institutions such as businesses, churches (such as the Catholic Church hierarchy), armies and governments, etc., are structured hierarchically.

Many social criticisms include a questioning of social hierarchies seen as being unjust. Feminism, for instance, often discusses a hierarchy of gender, in which a culture sees males or masculine traits as superior to females or feminine traits. In these terms, some criticize a hierarchy of only two nodes, "masculine" and "feminine", connected by the asymmetrical relationship "is more valuable to society".

In this context, and in other social criticisms, the word hierarchy usually is used as meaning power hierarchy or power structure. Feminists may not take issue with inanimate objects being organized in a hierarchical fashion, but rather with the specific asymmetrical organization of unequal value and power between men and women and, usually, other social hierarchies such as in racism, anti-gay bias, and bullying.

Distribution of power within political systems

• Autocracy: One individual retains complete and absolute power over others. This is also known as despotism.
• Monarchism: A king or queen has ultimate control over the power, but does share it with other individuals. Power is usually transmitted by heredity— in the primogeniture system, for example, the eldest son of a king will ascend to that position when the current king dies or resigns.
• Oligarchy: Political power is vested in a few individuals, who usually pass power by a hereditary system.
• Republic: Voting citizens elect representatives who propose, make, and enforce laws instead of citizens directly affecting the government. Also known as representative democracy.
• Democracy: Citizens directly vote in lawmaking. In contrast to representative democracy, this is sometimes known as a direct democracy.
• Anarchism: No laws and no government rule whatsoever. A decentralized grassroots participatory system of free associations and institutions where there is an absence of hierarchy.
• Ochlocracy: What some argue to be the end product of an unstable lawless system, a system known as "rule by organized crime". Such a system emerges when powerful gang-like organizations arrogate power and develop a semi-legitimate status.
• Plutocracy: A society in which power is distributed according to wealth.

Classical Viewpoint

In the aristocratic world of pre-Christian classical Europe, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle did not share the modern egalitarian, humanist identification of justice with linear social equality. As British philosopher Bertrand Russell points out, "Under the influence of democratic theory, we have come to associate justice with equality, while for Plato it has no such implications ... Plato's definition of justice makes it possible to have inequalities of power and privilege without injustice. The guardians are to have all the power, because they are the wisest members of the community." Similarly, in his Politics, Aristotle argues that some men are marked out by their inherent virtues for subjection, others for rule; "the man who is by nature not his own but another man's is by nature a slave." Aristotle states that tame animals are better off when ruled by man, and so are those who are naturally inferior and materialistic when ruled by their superiors.

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