ABSTRACT
Hierarchy is a familiar, widespread, and important social process for economizing. A good first approximation is to say that if individuals in a group were ranked according to the “extent” of their control over one another, the leader or leaders would be those with “significantly” greater control. One of the most striking features of Western society is the vital and ubiquitous role of hierarchical processes. The individual’s experience with three kinds of hierarchical organizations above all others seems to have accomplished this indoctrination. The advantages of hierarchical organizations in business, military life, government, and elsewhere seem so obvious and their conflict with equal control so blatant that liberal democratic theory and social practice tend to be unreconciled. Bureaucracy is the ubiquitous modern organization within which hierarchical processes are most commonly encountered; bureaucracy is also one of the most widely used and portentous social instruments for economizing found in contemporary societies.
