ABSTRACT
The process of individual empowerment, one of the megatrends shaping the future of the international system for years to come, fundamentally impacts the way in which leadership processes are played out. In the globalised reality, both leadership and its consequences are more than ever largely constructed by followers and hence influenced by followers’ cognitive patterns and inter-follower social influence processes. This creates a need for more inclusive models of global political leadership distinct from traditional structural/positional approaches. This chapter focuses on the motivations and patterns of organisational behaviours that have already been successfully applied within the area of global business, and assesses their potential for the political realm. A follower-centred approach can be useful in the analysis of global relations under the condition of rising fragmentation and the individual empowerment which grew to be one of the most important phenomena shaping these relationships.
