Search

In modern political science, the phenomenon of political leadership is described and explained using diverse theoretical models, different analytical perspectives, or different research scales. Keeping in mind this theoretical and research pluralism, the author suggests applying an original integral explanatory strategy, which defines the relational leadership asymmetry between the leader and followers in terms of a dialectical subject–object relationship (co-determination); that is to say, in terms of a dynamic and complex political process in which the interdependencies and mutual influences of the leader and followers fall under analysis. In this sense, leadership is treated as a processual phenomenon in which the form, content, and shape of leadership depend not only on the talents, qualities, or abilities of the political leader, but also – and in a gradable manner – on the external environment and followers, their collective expectations, aspirations, goals, needs, etc.; or, speaking more broadly, the particular-political conditions in which the complex leadership mechanism takes place.

The book presents a collection of articles authored by several members of the Warsaw School of Political Theory, affiliated with the University of Warsaw. The team of scholars, whose roots extend to the 1970s when professor Artur Bodnar founded the Political Theory Research Group at University of Warsaw's Methodical Centre for Political Science (COM SNP), has been conducting research under the leadership of professor Miros³aw Karwat. The school's most distinguishing features include: the acceptance of the directives and principles of methodological holism, the acceptance and creative development of holistic integral definitions, the application of sociocentric spatial analyses, and a critical approach to the “cratocentric” tradition.

This book depicts a new research perspective of political leadership, in which the multi-level and dynamic leadership relation is explained as relations between the leader (human agency) and followers (sociological environment). In this sense, leadership comprises mutual influences between personal and structural domain. In morphogenesis, the subjective matrix of leadership keeps the division into private and public exposure, as well as individual and collective realization, which in fact means that the phenomenon of political leadership directly depends on the reality of the agent and structure. The author offers a new point of view for his primary research goal, which is a precise and systematic explication of the notion of political leadership in the morphogenetic scope.