Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed--spun--as the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before.

This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

政治领导力已经卷土重来。从20世纪40年代到70年代，不仅政治学家，而且政治社会学家和心理学家、苏联学家、政治人类学家以及比较研究和发展研究的学者都对它进行了深入研究。此后，随着结构主义、新制度主义和理性选择研究政治、政府和治理方法的兴起，该领域失去了方向。然而，最近，研究政治的学生又回到了研究个别领导人的作用和领导力的行使来解释政治结果。这方面的课题不胜枚举：选举、冲突管理、公共政策、政府民望、发展、治理网络和区域一体化。在媒体时代，领导人被作为几乎所有社会问题的解决方案而呈现并进行舞台管理。通过大众传媒和互联网，公民和专业观察者比以往任何时候都更近距离地关注高级政治官员的崛起、影响和衰落。

这本手册通过询问 "我们今天在哪里 "来概括这一复苏。它通过确定各学科的独特贡献，对多学科领域进行排序。它满足了评估的迫切需求。它汇集了来自世界各地的学者，鼓励采用比较的视角，以全面覆盖所有主要的学科、方法和地区。它展示了政治领导力研究中的规范性和经验性传统，并将行为、制度和解释方法并列在一起。它涵盖了正式的、基于办公室的以及非正式的、新兴的政治领导力，以及民主和非民主的政体。