№ 4 - 2002
Koktysh K.Ye.
Socio-Cultural Frameworks of Institutionalization of Political Practices and Types of Societal Development (I)

It is formal — institutional — frameworks of overcoming a value crisis coming with marginalization, i.e. with the loss by a social object of its agency, that constitute the subject of the article. For all their variety, political institutions existing in society boil down to two types going back to the symbolic authoritative figures of a chieftain (prototype of executive power) and of a shaman (prototype of normative power), the author notes, and distinguishes (by the criterion of primacy, i.e. of legitimate domination within the available political framework) four possible types of political architecture, or, of framework identity, that regulates the dynamics of social processes: (1) the symbolic figure of a “chieftain” is primary as related to the figure of a “shaman”; (2) the symbolic figure of a “shaman” is primary as related to the figure of a “chieftain”; (3) domination of one or of the other of the two figures is determined situationally, being occasioned by a given combination of factors; (4) these figures do not interact and are joined exclusively by common social environment. The now published first part of the article analyzes in detail the first, “catholic” type of political archetecture. It is characterized, according to the author’s conclusion, by stability, given the environment is balanced, and by complications in case of need to get adapted to any changes which ever prove fraught with delegitimation of the prevailing order of things.