Reactive political leadership

Open Access

Abstract

We live in the twenty-first century, which witnessed by far the most intensive marketing of politics, and traditional approaches (The Great Man Theory, situational, relational) to the process of emergence of political leader-ship are simply not enough. Cooperation between leaders and their followers is determined by cultural and social context, specific political situation of the time, patterns of social behavior. Development of new information technolo-gies and dissemination of the means of mass communication have introduced another factor to the analyzed process, forced by civilisational changes. These changes initiated the processes shaping the emergence of a fourth approach to political leadership, which we may call reactive. Reactivity is an active process of management of the changing image of the leader, responding to the evolving social preferences, and subsequently disseminated through the media.