Noun

(hierarchies)

A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington

, title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=The [Washington] Post's proprietor through those turbulent [Watergate] days, Katharine Graham, held a double place in Washington’s hierarchy : at once regal Georgetown hostess and scrappy newshound, ready to hold the establishment to account.}}

Any group of objects ranked so that every one but the topmost is subordinate to a specified one above it.

Noun

(-)

The process or policy of organising as a hierarchy.

* 2000 , Colin D. Standish, Organizational Structure and Apostasy (page 18)

As we have explored the organizational development of the church, it has become evident that the organization that God wanted for His church was the antithesis of hierarchicalism .

*{{quote-news, year=2009, date=August 2, author=Lawrence Downes, title=Desert Odyssey, work=New York Times citation

, passage=“Beneath that quick-smiling or watchful Catholicism lurks another far more elaborate hierarchicalism which in turn subdivides all supposed ‘Mexicans’ into myriads of local spiritualities whose half-secret survival through all the long torments of the Spanish conquest promises their own continuance in bright-colored globules of coherence irrelevant to, hence safe from, the scrutiny of American capitalists.” }}