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Political leadership is a concept central to understanding political processes and outcomes, yet its definition is elusive. Many disciplines have contributed to the study of leadership, including political theory, history, psychology and management studies. Political Leadership reviews the contributions of these disciplines along with a discussion of the work of classic authors such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber and Robert Michels.

Written by a team of distinguished leadership scholars, this volume explores all the major fields of political leadership, from executive, legislative and party leadership to leadership in social movements and international organizations. The special value and appeal of this volume is the comparative focus which characterizes all chapters

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.

This chapter outlines the distinctive features and challenges of politics, governance, and leadership at the meso-level within national states, that is, provinces, regions, and states. It documents how regional interests, identities, and dynamics along with electoral and constitutional arrangements create meso-level political opportunity structures, as well as intergovernmental relations. It contrasts actor-centred and institutionalist approaches to understanding regional leadership, and discusses the various methodologies employed by scholars in this area. After critiquing what is currently a small yet disparate and conceptually poorly developed field, it concludes by sketching promising future directions.