Pattern to define dependency between classes, and the order they must be initialized

I have a load procedure that needs loaded objects to be initialized in a certain order, depending on the classes they belong to. Some classes hold references to other classes and depend on those other classes having been initialized first.

Right now, I define the order with a static number field in each class. The programmer is responsible of coming up with the number value. I can then sort objects by this number and initialize them in the correct order.

Is there a better way to do this? I would like each class to explicitly say which other classes it depends on (most often because it contains references to those classes), and then derive the order from that.