[questionableans]

Authoring and reviewing PRs when no one person owns them individually sure sounds like influencing the direction of the team without any authority to make a unilateral decision to me.

You’re right about politics, but I think the part where people may vary is the definition of authority. Does being consistently influential make someone an authority? It depends on what that means. They will be believed more often (they have soft power) but they don’t have hard power to command someone to do something. What makes it a gray area is they almost surely have influence with someone else who does have hard power.