Leadership in an Egalitarian Society

Abstract

Leadership is instrumental to resolution of collective action dilemmas, particularly in large, heterogeneous groups. Less is known about the characteristics or effectiveness of leadership in small-scale, homogeneous, and relatively egalitarian societies, in which humans have spent most of our existence. Among Tsimane’ forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia, we (1) assess traits of elected leaders under experimental and naturalistic conditions and (2) test whether leaders impact collective action outcomes. We find that elected leaders are physically strong and have more kin and other exchange partners. Their ranks on physical dominance, kin support, and trustworthiness predict how well their groups perform, but only where group members have a history of collaborative interaction. Leaders do not take more of the spoils. We discuss why physically strong leaders can be compatible with egalitarianism, and we suggest that leaders in egalitarian societies may be more motivated by maintaining an altruistic reputation than by short-term rewards of collective action.

Men’s status and reproductive success in 33 nonindustrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy

“…If we had measures of status that aligned more closely with dominance or prestige, we may have found greater variation in their effects on reproduction, though dominance and prestige are difficult to disentangle. Even physical formidability combines dominance and prestige, because larger men are often preferred as leaders, or provide other benefits as coalition members (28). Also, our measures of status likely vary in how much they represent dominance or prestige depending on the population, e.g., political influence may involve more coercion in Oceanic horticulturalists, who recognize chiefs, relative to Amazonian horticulturalists.…”

“…In low-density relatively nomadic forager societies, decisionmaking is typically consensus based (at least among adult men), and status inequality is limited by fluid group membership, coalitional checks on would-be dominants, and cooperative production and interdependence (14,(25)(26)(27). Leadership tends to arise occasionally to meet situational demands and typically involves little or no material benefit relative to followers (28,29). Variance in male reproduction can be small and not appreciably greater than variance in female reproduction (17).…”

Collective action problem in heterogeneous groups

“…Other nonlinear models predict that all group members will contribute proportionally to their endowments or the ratio of the valuation of the prize/goods to the cost of individual effort. In humans, high contributors can also increase their reputation which would allow them to get better mates and allies [148].…”

The Evolved Functions of Procedural Fairness: An Adaptation for Politics

“…A key risk for any follower in a hierarchical, leader-follower relationship is that the delegation of leadership allows the leader to exploit his privileged position to either extract benefits for himself (or his friends or kin) or impose costs on his enemies (Boehm 1999;von Rueden et al 2014). As argued above, there are multiple solutions to any problem that confronts the collective and each of these solutions impose different benefits and costs on different members of the collective.…”

“…In contrast, for humans and a few other animals such as chimpanzees, individual formidability does not translate directly into political power. In highly social animals, coalitions of less formidable individuals can be organized to counter any single individual (Boehm 1999;de Waal 2007) and, for humans, political power is mostly a matter of abilities to form and maintain alliances (Whiten & Byrne, 1997;Von Rueden et al 2014). As consequence, for the human political entrepreneur, one strategy for forming a stable base of allies is to seek prestige rather than dominance (Sidanius & Pratto 2001;Price & Van Vugt 2014).…”