Science walks on two legs. One leg consists of asking: How things are ? This leads to observation, measurement, graphing, and statistical description. The other leg consists of asking: How things should be , on logical grounds? This leads to logical models that should become quantitatively predictive. Science largely consists of such models, tested with data. Developed science establishes not only connections among individual factors but also connections among these connections. But social sciences often take the lazy road of fitting raw data with a straight line or some fashionable format, unaware of the need to think and build models based on logic. Major widening in social science methodology is crucial.

At first sight, political science seems to be on a good way in most countries. If this discipline, as a look at its beginnings in Athens may suggest, will flourish particularly well in times of political crises, then political science should be intellectually well fed in our period of regime collapse, geopolitical restructuration, and growing international tensions. At second sight, however, some disturbing features of «normal political science» become evident. They include the attractiveness of doing academic «routine science» instead of coping with actual practical problems; attempts at «pleasing the public» instead of taking a critical stance towards established political thought and behavior; comfortable limitation of research interests to contemporary issues instead of attempts at drawing lessons from the whole span of history; and practicing «occidental ethnocentrism» instead of striving at «analytic cosmopolitism». The article challenges these characteristics of today’s political science, thereby inviting a new generation of political scientists to new thematic and theoretical openness.

The article considers the basic problems of political epistemology. Modern complication of cognitive procedures, the exhaustion of traditionally-effective conceptual approaches, the transformation of the meaning of universals and of political concepts indicate the reshaping of all basic structures of political ontology. The debate about crisis theory and the new political realities correlated with the linear erosion of political and ideological projects, the principal the heterogeneity of the world and knowledge, reflecting ambiguity of the future and the anxiety of expectations

The article reveals the sources and factors of evolution of scientific knowledge about politics that generate internal contradictions and crises in the process of updating the knowledge about the world of politics. Of particular importance the author gives the analysis of the contradictions inherent in the political reflection, the conflicts in the ontological, cognitive and axiological bases of political images and the pluralism of conceptual and theoretical approaches. In this context, describes some of the key features of political epistemology in modern terms, marked terms of paradigm transformations and the current update of knowledge about politics. Define the areas of research, allowing to overcome the crisis situation in the evolution of political science, taking into account national peculiarities of the increment of knowledge.

The article analyzes evolution of party systems in Western democracies in the light of the seminal theory of Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. Analysis of contemporary rightist radical parties leads the author to the conclusion that this phenomenon can be interpreted as a reaction of Western societies to the «crisis of postmodern world», yet it is unlikely to provoke authoritarian relapse like the inteewar period.

The article focuses on legal prohibition of communist symbols in post-communist countries. Conditions of the prohibition are highlighted. The author applies qualitative comparative analysis to create a typology of countries had bent the communist symbols. The typology is based on varieties of sets of the conditions.

This article deals with some theoretical and methodological issues, related to the study of the state and dynamics of traditional and new components and factors of power and influence of modern states in the world. Approaches to their conceptualization are suggested with the focus on potentials of power and influence and their actual effects; power is interpreted as an attribute and a relationship of specific sort, different types and instruments of power and influence are analyzed. New approaches towards definitions of empirical indicators of power and influence are suggested as well as methods of their processing for creation of composite indices. Prospects for future research are presented.

This article is focused on ‘resilience’, the conception which is new yet already very popular in contemporary politics. The work presents the main stages of the genesis of this conception and its characteristics. Special attention is paid to political science and International Relations theory. The potential use of the conception of resilience in the political sphere is demonstrated through the analysis of a number of recent Russian legislative initiatives.

We define the civil service as a political and administrative institution established to meet the needs in the professional performance of political decisions and providing the daily contact between the society and the political power. The current Russian legislation does not define civil service in terms of current the features of public institutions. This may be the reason why the institutionalization of the civil service in post-Soviet Russia faces difficulties. We see ways to overcome this contradiction, which include the improvement of legislation and implementation to the strategic documents the goals, objectives and performance criteria of civil service institution-building. This goals and objectives should orientate the civil servants to ensure economic growth and improving the quality of citizen’s life. The architecture of the civil service institution was offered, including the legal, institutional and human components. We identified the institutional characteristics and location of this institution in the environment of society. The algorithm of civil service institutional change was clarified, which includes elements such as institutional selection, the definition of institutional norms and institutional effects. The requirements for the assessment of institutional effectiveness were formulated. We proved the necessity to describe the driving forces of civil service development not only by external influences, but also its internal environment. The comparison of this set of statistics with indicators of internal development of the civil service allows concluding about the correlation between the civil service performance on different stages of its institutional transformation and attainment the priorities of the economy and society.

Study of coalition formation which is one of the most developed and dynamic in political science builds upon several methodological approaches. Once chosen, each approach not only provides a basis for models and concepts, but also imposes limitations on its explanatory and predictive powers. Creation of a single theory of coalition formation integrating current models and concepts is on the agenda today. The domination of «methodological nationalism» as starting point for coalition analysis is a major challenge for coalition formation study. Yet emerging studies of subnational politics and regional coalition formation illustrates a shift towards «methodological regionalism». A single but «decentralized» theory may respond to these challenges, which will develop in two dimensions: it will horizontally integrate game-theoretic, rational choice and institutional models; and it will vertically elaborate analytical tools to explain coalition formation at national, regional and local levels. This article is a further contribution to arguments in favor of a single coalition formation theory and contains some assumptions it can be based on.

Article tries to shed light upon the political theory functional contradiction through the dichotomy of humanistic and post-structuralist tradition. In the nutshell, there is a question about the status and the process of legitimization of the scientific knowledge and its corresponding consequences. Several sections of the articles are dedicated to external and internal aspects of the methodological reflection within political theory domain. Conclusion is drawn on a possible way of political theory development in the future.

This article surveys the main approaches to the causes of electoral reforms in comparative perspective. Based on the recent literature, perspective research paths to the analysis of electoral system reforms are highlighted. In particularly, the attention is put on the importance of studying the phenomenon of electoral engineering in electoral authoritarian regimes.