Egalitarianism and democracy are often treated as uniquely human political achievements, yet animal groups routinely solve problems of group cohesion and stability (Hemelrijk, Reference Hemelrijk1999; Thornhill, Fincher, & Aran, Reference Thornhill, Fincher and Aran2009), leadership or collective decision-making (Conradt & Roper, Reference Conradt and Roper2007; Couzin et al., Reference Couzin, Ioannou, Demirel, Gross, Torney, Hartnett, Conradt, Levin and Leonard2011; Seeley, Reference Seeley2010) without fixed hierarchies or coercive control. Studying how influence is distributed and regulated in animal societies helps clarify how egalitarian processes can emerge and persist despite individual differences in needs, information, or social position (Conradt et al., Reference Conradt, Krause, Couzin and Roper2009; Faria et al., Reference Faria, Dyer, Tosh and Krause2010; King et al., Reference King, Sueur, Huchard and Cowlishaw2011; Sueur, Deneubourg, & Petit, Reference Sueur, Deneubourg and Petit2012). We endorse Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden’s view that egalitarianism is a process, not an outcome, and does not require strict equality. Their focus on regulating status, autonomy, and resource access is conceptually and empirically sound. Drawing on animal collective decision-making models, we show egalitarian processes can emerge and persist despite systematic individual inequalities.

Across social animals, collective decisions – such as when and where to move – often require consensus to preserve group cohesion (Conradt & Roper, Reference Conradt and Roper2005; King & Sueur, Reference King and Sueur2011). These decisions routinely occur among individuals that differ in physiological needs, energetic reserves, information, age, dominance rank, or social centrality, and who might hence, at first, disagree with a decision to move. Yet many groups reach shared decisions without coercion and without fixed, despotic authority (Conradt & Roper, Reference Conradt and Roper2003; Sueur, Reference Sueur2012). Importantly, equality of outcomes often does not characterize these systems: influence is uneven, initiations are asymmetrically distributed, and some individuals are followed more than others (Jacobs et al., Reference Jacobs, Sueur, Deneubourg and Petit2011; Ramos et al., Reference Ramos, Petit, Longour, Pasquaretta and Sueur2015; Sueur, Reference Sueur2011). Nonetheless, the process by which decisions are reached can be described as egalitarian in the sense emphasized by Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden: it regulates influence dynamically, prevents irreversible asymmetries, and maintains autonomy through reversible participation.

A first step toward conceptual clarity is terminological. Research on animal coordination has moved away from anthropocentric labels such as “democratic” or “despotic” decision-making, emphasizing instead process-level distinctions between shared and unshared consensus (Pyritz et al., Reference Pyritz, King, Sueur and Fichtel2011). A shared consensus occurs when multiple individuals contribute to a decision outcome, even if contributions are unequal. By contrast, an unshared consensus arises when one individual’s preference determines the outcome, but others retain the capacity to accept or reject it (Bourjade & Sueur, Reference Bourjade and Sueur2010; King, Reference King2010). This distinction parallels the target article’s emphasis on autonomy and the refusal to acquiesce to arbitrary demands. What matters is not identical influence, but whether influence remains conditional and contestable.

Formal models clarify how such systems operate under inequality. In a seminal review, Conradt and Roper (Reference Conradt and Roper2007) showed that shared decision-making can evolve under a wide range of conditions, particularly when groups are heterogeneous in composition, when alternative outcomes differ substantially in costs, and when group size approaches or exceeds its ecological optimum. Under these conditions, pooling preferences reduces collective error and enhances individual fitness. Heterogeneity, rather than undermining shared decisions, can make them more profitable. The mechanism by which heterogeneity stabilizes collective processes is illustrated by the principle of “leading according to need” (Conradt et al., Reference Conradt, Krause, Couzin and Roper2009). In groups, individuals can increase their influence by adjusting movement speed or social attraction parameters (King & Sueur, Reference King and Sueur2011). However, doing so entails costs, including increased risk of group fragmentation. Consequently, those for whom reaching a particular destination is most crucial – those with higher energetic or safety needs, and hence higher motivation to move – are most likely to initiate movements (Sueur et al., Reference Sueur, Deneubourg, Petit and Couzin2010, Reference Sueur, MacIntosh, Jacobs, Watanabe and Petit2013). Leadership can thus emerge from state-dependent motivation rather than dominance per se. This phenomenon requires neither altruism nor explicit communication about needs. It is an emergent property of individuals balancing personal urgency against cohesion costs. Our theoretical work has formalized these dynamics across repeated decision events (Sueur, Reference Sueur2012). We have compared fixed leadership, need-based leadership, and voting. With equal needs, all worked; with divergent needs, fixed leadership failed. Need-based leadership remained viable – even when one individual made 95% of decisions – and voting adapted via majority thresholds. Egalitarian processes thus accommodate structured inequality through responsiveness to variation.

Empirical studies support need-based leadership. In macaques, leadership initiation can be predicted from body mass and reproductive state – proxies for nutrient requirements – more reliably than from dominance rank (Sueur et al., Reference Sueur, MacIntosh, Jacobs, Watanabe and Petit2013). Although high-ranking individuals often initiate movements, this effect is largely mediated by their energetic needs. Influence is thus conditional and context dependent. Similarly, in European bison, adult females initiate most movements, but followership depends on alignment with the orientation of the majority, suggesting a distributed, voting-like mechanism (Ramos et al., Reference Ramos, Petit, Longour, Pasquaretta and Sueur2015). In animal groups with scale-free social networks, central individuals are more likely to elicit followership, but this emerges from simple affiliative rules (“follow my close affiliate”) rather than institutionalized authority (King et al., Reference King, Sueur, Huchard and Cowlishaw2011; Sueur et al., Reference Sueur, King, Pelé and Petit2012). Influence is embedded in network structure and can shift with changing relationships (Sueur, Deneubourg, & Petit, Reference Sueur, Deneubourg and Petit2012; Sueur & Deneubourg, Reference Sueur and Deneubourg2011).

Models of informed minorities further reinforce this point. Even a small proportion of informed individuals can guide a group accurately without explicit signalling or knowledge of who is informed (Couzin et al., Reference Couzin, Krause, Franks and Levin2005). The larger the group, the smaller the proportion required. Strongly opinionated minority can dictate group choice, but the presence of uninformed individuals spontaneously inhibits this process, returning control to the numerical majority (Couzin et al., Reference Couzin, Ioannou, Demirel, Gross, Torney, Hartnett, Conradt, Levin and Leonard2011). Influence here is epistemic, not coercive. Individuals need not know who leads, nor whether they are in a majority or minority. Such systems exemplify distributed influence under informational inequality, yet remain fundamentally processual and non-despotic.

These findings refine the framework in three ways. First, they define egalitarian decision-making independently of equal status: influence must be state-dependent, reversible, and limited by collective tolerance. Second, heterogeneity can stabilize egalitarian systems by aligning influence with urgency. Third, they identify failure conditions: irreversible asymmetries, opaque information, restricted exit, or influence decoupled from need foster hierarchy. Conversely, uncertainty and fluid group structure favor distributed influence. Egalitarianism is thus not equality of status but dynamic regulation of influence within groups. It prevents inequality from solidifying into domination through ongoing redistribution.