Interests in power: structure and communication aspects

The article examines the structure of interests in power among students preparing for careers within the system of public authority, and the communicative conditions in which this structure takes shape. Educational influence does not reach the student directly: classroom and extracurricular formats convey particular meanings through expert communication with practitioners, the analysis of professional cases, feedback, and horizontal communication in joint activity. The study aims to establish how the balance of power motives and social orientations of potential political leaders changes in the course of training and in subsequent professional activity, and which communication formats are associated with retaining the socially significant component of this structure. The author’s definition of interest in power is presented, and the two-component structure of the category, combining power motives and social orientations, is substantiated. The empirical basis is a panel longitudinal study of 2017-2026 conducted within a bachelor’s programe in «State and Municipal Administration» (profile «Domestic Policy and Leadership»): six successive cohorts, 360 respondents, the method of paired comparisons. Nine years of observation show that the structure of interests in power does not remain constant: the growth of socially significant elements in the first half of training gives way to their erosion in the second, while the profile formed by graduation is reproduced in the first years of professional activity.

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