The Phenomenon of Political Leadership: the Problem of Institutionalization of Public Power

This article is devoted to an important and urgent problem — the study of the phenomenon of political leadership, determining the optimal conditions for its formation as a political institution. In modern conditions, the layering of various cultural and historical paradigms directly related to the strategic development of key social institutions is very clearly manifested. On the one hand, researchers note the onset of a fundamentally new era for civilization — the information society, which has its own strategic guidelines and priority areas, on the other — the previous (industrial and agrarian) coexist in parallel, competing and inhibiting each other’s development. The onset of a new technological order does not cancel the expansion of the previous ones. That is why political leadership today attracts a lot of attention from political scientists, public politicians, and leading representatives of key social institutions. The paper examines the history of the development of ideas about political leadership, analyzes the conceptual apparatus, identifies the essential features of this phenomenon. The analysis of the problem field, the criticism of existing approaches and the determination of prevailing trends indicate the reliability and thoroughness of the conducted research, emphasize its theoretical and practical significance. The materials for the research were scientific sources in the public domain (books, monographs, textbooks, articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals; dissertations and abstracts; articles in the collection of materials of scientific and practical conferences, etc.), official mass media (websites, newspapers, magazines, television broadcasts), public statements senior officials, regulatory documents, results of public opinion research, expert assessments of leading political scientists, political technologists and consulting agencies. The methods used are mostly theoretical: analysis of scientific texts, periodicals, public statements of officials, regulatory documents, results of public opinion research; comparison, comparison, extrapolation. The result of the conducted research is the clarification of the concept of “political leadership”, the problematization of the dynamics of its formation and transformation into a political institution. The results of the study were discussed at the meetings of the Department of Humanities of the Institute of Social Sciences and the Department of Economic Theory and Politics of the RANEPA