What you describe is still the emergence of hierarchy. There's no rule that it can't be a voluntary arrangement of followers electing a leader, willingly follow

What you describe is still the emergence of hierarchy. There's no rule that it can't be a voluntary arrangement of followers electing a leader, willingly following. When said leader doesn't deliver they remove their support, and elevate another... i.e. name him. Leadership qualities absolutely will come in to play in that scenario. Yes, bureaucratic structures can calcify a dysfunctional hierarchy; on the other hand the boss writing the checks exemplifies a hierarchy. The challenge is to construct a system that best maps to the natural variance in leadership abilities and successfully elevate best qualified leaders to positions of authority. The degree of mismatch is the degree of failure of the organization or system. >The reason that people lead within a hierarchy is not because they have the "initiative to lead" Sometimes this is the case though. How can you make a blanket statement it isn't true, given the assignment to lead & choice of bill-payer is certainly to a large degree informed by assessment of leadership ability?