Regional political leadership in a sociological context: image, PR and media communications

The problem of the theoretical study of political leadership is one of the most controversial because the processes of globalisation and the dynamics of social transformations are attributed to the specified range of issues of particular importance. Over the past time, the range of research activities devoted to the issues of leadership has expanded significantly – from the studies by psychologists, lawyers, and neurophysiologists, to theoretical generalisations by social philosophers. Thereby this problem has been enriched by the advances in understanding of socialisation and group self-organisation, which make it possible to develop a number of promising directions in the study of the phenomenon of leadership. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the directions of the development of modern society necessitate the search of innovative approaches to this phenomenon, which has received a fundamentally new quality of scientific discourse. The authors show that the general public's ideas about the essential characteristics of political leadership were formed under the decisive influence of conceptions about the uniqueness of this social phenomenon, which can change the course of the historical process and provide its own ethnic group with a prominent place in social progress. The practical significance of the study is determined by the fact that in the recent years, approaches of functional content have become increasingly popular, within the framework of which it is proposed to consider a public and political figure as a manager hired for public activities.