  We study the mutual influence of authority and persuasion in the flow of
opinion. Many social organizations are characterized by a hierarchical
structure where the propagation of opinion is asymmetric. In the normal flow of
opinion formation a high-rank agent uses its authority (or its persuasion when
necessary) to impose its opinion on others. However, agents with no authority
may only use the force of its persuasion to propagate their opinions. In this
contribution we describe a simple model with no social mobility, where each
agent belongs to a class in the hierarchy and has also a persuasion capability.
The model is studied numerically for a three levels case, and analytically
within a mean field approximation, with a very good agreement between the two
approaches. The stratum where the dominant opinion arises from is strongly
dependent on the percentage of agents in each hierarchy level, and we obtain a
phase diagram identifying the relative frequency of prevailing opinions. We
also find that the time evolution of the conflicting opinions polarizes after a
short transient.
