Acceptable Hierarchies: Epistemic Democracy in Europe and the Middle East.

The people can tolerate elitists' claims to be superior on three conditions, relating to distributive justice, open access, and transparent deliberation. Hierarchy is acceptable as long as the elite redistribute wealth and include new deserving members, and as long as they maintain open a channel of communication with a general audience at large. To be sustainable in the long run any hierarchy must be at least tolerated and at most fully accepted by those who are at its roots. When it is so, hierarchy and democracy can cohabit: unequal people are treated unequally according to variations of merit, services to society, and vision of the future, whereas shared and refined knowledge can bring people the benefits of a just hierarchy without sacrificing basic equality and individual rights in the process. This applies to regimes where power is strictly compartmentalized (successor regimes of the British revolution; later on, countries organized according to the Westminster's system) and regimes where individual rights prevail (once in Athens; now in Europe). The recipe could work also in patriarchal regimes of the Middle East, despite a trend to be estranged from sources of constitutional inspiration and a tendency to have an excessive respect for grey power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]