A key objective of the target article is to better operationalize the processes underlying egalitarianism. One such process is “consensus-based collective decision-making” (Figure 1). My argument is that the use of this concept in the context of egalitarianism is imprecise as well as potentially misleading and that we ought to focus on deliberation instead.

The notion of consensus-based decision-making remains imprecise because consensus as an outcome, whether thought of as unanimity or as the lack of opposition, is distinct from consensus-seeking as a process (which does not necessarily need to end in a consensual outcome). It can be potentially misleading because both consensus (outcome) and consensus-seeking (process) may conceal non-egalitarian motives and practices. For example, the articulation of an alleged consensus by “informal leaders” (p. 14) can function as a tool to suppress the voicing of dissent (Urfalino, Reference Urfalino2014) and, if successful, might result in the kind of consensus that does not at all reflect the consent of all those involved.

As the authors of the target article themselves suggest while discussing consensus-based decision-making, “[w]hat is important is that individuals respect the conventions of deliberation and not press minor oppositions, not that all group members agree” (sect. 5.5, para. 2. p. 14 [emphasis added]). So why not simply focus on deliberation? In line with the authors’ objective to sharpen the operationalization of egalitarian processes, future research, then, can be made more precise by focusing specifically on deliberation, defined as “interpersonal verbal communication involving mutual respect and reasoning about (potential) political decisions” (van der Does, Reference Van der Does2025, p. 4).

Retaining the notion of consensus-based decision-making may also keep the literature on egalitarian (hunter-gatherer) societies divorced from that on deliberation. To my knowledge, only a few attempts to bridge these two bodies of literature exist to date (Reedy et al., Reference Reedy, Orr, Spicer, Blanchard, Hiratsuka, Ketchum and Woodbury2020; van der Does, Reference Van der Does2023, Reference Van der Does2025; Venkataraman & Kraft, 2025). That is unfortunate for several reasons.

First, research on deliberation has already developed and tested relevant observational measures. These include measures of mutual respect, such as attentive listening, turn-taking, and, as signs of disrespect, interruptions and rude language (e.g., Frieß, Ziegele, & Heinbach, Reference Frieß, Ziegele and Heinbach2021; Scudder, Reference Scudder2021). Similarly, measures of reasoning include the occurrence of (formal) justifications (Steiner et al., Reference Steiner, Bächtiger, Spörndli and Steenbergen2004) as well as (specific forms of) storytelling, acknowledging that argumentation may come in varying discursive forms (Gerber et al., Reference Gerber, Bächtiger, Shikano, Reber and Rohr2018).

Second, the literature on deliberation could guide studies of egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies toward questions that go beyond the juxtaposition of consensus and majority rule (Table 2). For example: “Do people in such societies always talk before they make a political decision?” and “Do discussions prior to political decisions (always) show signs of reasoning and mutual respect?” Based on my own coding of a random (N = 3,464 paragraphs) and a purposively (N = 1,573 paragraphs) selected sample of ethnographic materials from eHRAF, my tentative answers are that we can find evidence of talk prior to political decisions across disparate hunter-gatherer societies as well as evidence of such talk showing signs of mutual respect and reasoning. At the same time, evidence of no talk prior to political decisions appears just as frequently in the ethnographic record, and signs of disrespect and claim-making (rather than reason-giving) are also not uncommon (for details, see van der Does, Reference Van der Does2023, Chapter 3; the data are accessible at https://osf.io/2xuha/). Beyond this, the deliberation literature has also raised more challenging questions such as how to take into (equal) consideration the interests of non-human animals and natural ecosystems in deliberation (or even how to engage them as equals in deliberation) (e.g., Donaldson, Reference Donaldson2020; Goodin, Reference Goodin1996), pushing research on this egalitarian process beyond purely anthropocentric politics.

Third, deliberation research contains relevant empirical evidence and insights. As the authors of the target article point out, deliberation as an egalitarian process need not only occur in hunter-gatherer societies. Research on deliberation in diverse small-scale societies and settings already shows that people often opt for deliberative conventions to reach political decisions, particularly when they share strong social bonds (e.g., Min, Reference Min2015; Myers, Reference Myers2022; Starr, Martínez-Torres, & Rosset, Reference Starr, Martínez-Torres and Rosset2011).

Fourth, research on egalitarian (hunter-gatherer) societies can also inform research on deliberation. For instance, studies of hunter-gatherer societies might hint at what could motivate people to include (the interests of ) non-human animals in political discussion, with a recent study of the ethnographic record suggesting that concern for them arises when people perceive them as pseudo-humans (Thompson, Reference Thompson2025).

Fifth, insights into egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies can aid in testing and developing evolutionary theories of deliberation by providing a “model for human social organization” in the relevant “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” (Van Vugt, Hogan, & Kaiser, Reference Van Vugt, Hogan and Kaiser2008, p. 187). While not elaborated upon by Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden, such evolutionary theorizing driven by and tested against empirical evidence from hunter-gatherer societies could help to explain why people deliberate and concomitantly point toward relevant environmental inputs (e.g., ingroup political disagreement) that may have triggered deliberation in the relevant ancestral environment and that continue to do so today because it proved a stable solution to an adaptive problem (van der Does, Reference Van der Does2025).

That said, such hypotheses in evolutionary psychology are nearly always conditional and testing them, therefore, requires empirics with considerable situational detail (as do other hypotheses related to specific socio-ecological circumstances). While verifying the hypothesis in hunter-gatherer societies that deliberation is likely to occur when people disagree about an upcoming political decision with members of their own (in)group, the published ethnographic materials from eHRAF that I studied rarely provided sufficient detail (van der Does, Reference Van der Does2023, Chapter 3). The suggestion that “there is opportunity for more targeted analyses of ethnographic texts” (sect. 7, para. 9), therefore, seems less promising for deliberation. A more fruitful way forward could be to look for more detailed information in unpublished field notes archived for cultures such as the Aranda in Australia (e.g., Petch, Reference Petch2000, on the work of Spencer and Gillen).