Public Leaders in Regional Economic Development

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of public leaders in regional economic development from a community-building point of view. According to the basic hypothesis, the role of leaders rises everywhere during periods of instability, but remains always relevant in economic peripheries. Inspired by the chaos theory, we argue that leaders have decisive roles during unstable periods or chaos in a society when a very small fluctuation may qualitatively change the direction of development. Our second point here is that leaders will always be in key positions on economic peripheries where a general lack of human resources and a thin institutional thickness exist. The theoretical discussion refers to Weber's Schmalenbach's 'emotional community'/'Bund' concepts and Gumilev's theory of ethnogenesis and tries to plant these approaches within the present day framework. The empirical case study describes a perfect leadership and a successful community-building process in Emmaste Community, Estonia.