Nazarbekoba Z.M.

A. Baitursynov Kostanai State University, Kazakhstan

The political leadership

The characteristic of political leadership has to proceed, first of all, from understanding of that leadership that it is the universal and integral mechanism of functioning of some human community. Thanks to it, the community of people has additional opportunities for the strengthening of internal integration, the increase of degree of integrity and, as a result, the strengthening of the resilience.

The leadership is a way of internal structuring of the social group, allocation of those fundamental elements which promote the realization of the common interests. In this sense the leadership characterizes not only personal qualities of the person (group of persons) carrying out these functions, but mainly their relations with the main part of the population. The leader is an element of maintenance of the relations of "tops" and "bottoms", their institutionalizing for self-preservation of a community and implementation of the interests by it. As a matter of fact, the leader is the institute connected by the relation of responsibility before the population.

Considering the social nature of such relations, the leader along with the status characteristics reflects the existence of the special moral and ethical relations with the population which can testify to this or that level of the authoritativeness of board. Differently, the activity of some leading person is inevitably mediated by moral estimates of the population which reflect this or that level of informal support of its ascendent position.

All called general properties of leadership are inherent also in its political form. However for the characteristic of essence of actually political leadership two components have the position of importance: the status and the moral and ethical. The first assumes existence of the formal (official) opportunities allowing this or that person (group of persons) steadily to influence the power, to head real decision-making process, to carry out certain functions and to bear a certain responsibility in their framework. The second, moral and ethical component, shows only moral responsibility of the heads before the population as a condition of preservation and stability of the political power.

Thus, the political leadership as institute of the power possesses the double essence which is including both the institutional, and the moral aspects. From the status party the political leadership acts as the highest segment of the power completing a pyramid of management, as the decision-making center which defines style and nature of activity of all other main administrative structures and the organizations. At the same time the existence of moral and ethical communications of the leader with the population gives the power organizations additional resources for the solution of political tasks.

The distinctive features of political leadership are decided also by its scale, organic communication with interests of social groups, interaction on such social institute, as the state. Considering it, it is impossible to transfer to activity of some political leader mechanically those features of behavior, motivation or other lines of activity of the leader which are shown in small groups (for example, to consider it only as focus of the group relations or to cause a consent from the point of view of its art, to take a special role position, to have continuous impact on the power, etc.).

Many researchers rely on the typology of leadership developed by the German philosopher and the sociologist Max Veber (1864 - 1920). It allocated three types of leadership:

1) the traditional - the right for leadership, belonging to elite, belief in sanctity of traditions;

2) the charismatic - belief in ability of the leader, its exclusiveness. a cult of personality

3) rationally - legal (bureaucratic) - it is based on belief in legality of an existing order.

The political leader, especially the leader of national scale, possesses also special nature of communication with the population, mediating this process by activity of special structures – the administrative staff, the specialized political organizations, for example, parties, mass media, etc. which create special social communications of the power and society. Such "remote" information communications by time exclude direct contacts of leaders with the population, inducing the population to make a fetish of their figures, creating an inadequate image of the Supreme power.

Expressing interests of large social groups, the political leader inevitably solves in the course of power implementation the various social problems, playing multiple roles, carrying out diverse functions. And in political space multipurpose nature of activity of the leader, oriented on balance of various interests, as a rule, gives to his behavior corporate and group character.

Along with these characteristics - we will call them general political – the political leaders possess also special lines and qualities which give the chance to them not only to supervise device activity, to compete with other representatives of ruling class, but also to gain authority of the population. From the standard point of view these personal qualities have to have demonstration character, i.e. to show to citizens those social benefactors which it estimates positively. Machiavelli still wrote that for the sovereign the main thing is to create "visibility of existence" of those qualities which are pleasant to his citizens. Only this way it is possible to provide the power and the "spiritual reigning" over the people. Therefore the slyness, the deception of the population are necessary for politicians of such level with qualities which allow them to supervise political processes.

Political leadership arises only in the presence of certain political and civil liberties, i.e. at existence of political pluralism, multi-party system, continuous political competition of people - carriers of these or those ideas and social interests - in parliament or party. Democracy development, active political culture of masses, existence of civil society and political opposition narrow opportunities for incompetent leadership, an abuse of power and create conditions for the effective political management of society.