A mechanism is disclosed for resolving conflicts between actions that target elements of a hierarchical data structure. Actions that are associated with criteria that are satisfied by an element of a target data structure are selected from among a plurality of specified actions. The selected actions are sorted by action type. Actions that conflict with a first-ordered action are determined. If the priority of the first-ordered action is the highest of the priorities of the conflicting actions, then the first-ordered action is performed and the other conflicting actions are canceled such that they are not performed relative to the element. Otherwise, the first-ordered action is canceled and processing continues with the next-ordered element. This conflict resolution technique may be applied to each of the remaining sorted actions in order, and for each element in the target data structure.