In the absence of confirmed "top-down" official information, the general public has apparently been forming their own attitudes in a "bottom-up" manner.
There was a sting in his comments, though: "The publication should be from the top down," meaning that top officials (like Wen Jiabao, the premier, or Xi Jinping, the likely next president), should publish their accounting first.
"My authority is to investigate any official - top down - for misconduct," he said.
Top, down, starting with hair.
Viewing Ms. Burger as too top-down, many S.E.I.U. officials rallied behind a union executive vice president and the eventual winner, Mary Kay Henry.
No official, top-down change is really needed, excep (eventually) for things like money and legal recognition for dozenal measurement systems.
Thomson's vision of classic cinema is, in effect, religious: people, he thinks, used to believe what they were being told by Hollywood, just as they used to believe what they were fed by the clergy and by politicians, and the loss of belief in an official, top-down version of reality has let out the dogs of skepticism, free-thinking, and individualism.
Diplomatic historians, by contrast, generally work from the top down, diving into official archives and concentrating on people in power, an approach often tagged as elitist and old-fashioned.
Two local party leaders were fired and the authorities made an offer that is rare in China's top-down political system: county officials would negotiate with a group of village representatives chosen by popular consensus.
MWENGA, Democratic Republic of Congo — As his plane cut through the clouds above eastern Congo on Friday, John Holmes, the United Nations' top humanitarian official, looked down pensively at the miles and miles of thick forest covering one of the most chronically afflicted parts of Africa, if not the world.
"It'll be interesting to see what happens when Kelly realizes how resistant these guys are to top-down directives," one former C.B.P. official told me in the spring.
