Political Question

What is the name for the class of government in which you have a pure pyramid system of rulers? (Click the title for the rest. :) )

For example (three examples, actually): in ancient China, many families may have had intimate contact with the man who would one day be king, but they were a drop in the penny bucket compared with the millions upon millions of Chinese peasants whom that king would rule without ever meeting them. In modern-day America, a small handful of people may personally know the man who becomes the next President of the United States, but to the rest of us he is little more than a political celebrity we know less well than Brad Pitt or Oprah Winfrey. Even in feudal Europe, the pyramid structure fell apart at the peasant level: serfs may have had lords, and the lords in turn may have had their own lords, etc., but there were lordless peasants, men who made their living in ways that didn't require sponsorship or land (e.g. traveling entertainers). Any man whom these peasants might respect would have had no say in who was lord of the county they found themselves in, nor any say in who was king of the country they found themselves in.

So having explored these classic examples of feudal monarchy (x2) and the modern-day equivalent, the democratic republic (x1), my question is, what is the name given to the system of rule in which a genuinely all-encompassing political pyramid is the basis for governance? In other words, something like this:

0. I trust my dad to have my family's best interests at heart. So he's representing all four of us.
1. My dad and other men/women of the house meet in a neighborhood council and nominate one of our neighbors, Mr. Smith, to be our representative in the town council.
2. Mr. Smith and the other town council representatives convene and agree to nominate Mr. Johnson for the position of county representative for our town.
3. At the county level, Mr. Johnson and other representatives from all over the county convene and agree that Mr. Samuels is the mightiest man of our land (i.e. in the county) and should therefore represent us at the state level.
4. Mr. Samuels picks up his axe and makes haste towards Indianapolis. There, he finds like-minded men who rally behind a certain John of Avon. Mr. Samuels agrees and lends his -- our -- support to John of Avon. And John winds up becoming Indiana's representative at the national level.
5. John of Avon goes to D.C. to represent the state of Indiana. There, he and other congressmen are pressed to decide who among us should represent our nation at the United Nations. They agree to select the wizened old man Lester of Burbank, a retired taxi cab driver from the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
6. And so Lester of Burbank represents America at the United Nations.

I'm not saying that this form of rule is necessarily attractive -- though I find it to be attractive -- nor that it is efficient. I am simply asking for its name, since I don't believe "feudalism" or "monarchy" is an accurate description for what I've detailed.