№ 5 - 2002
Koktysh K.Ye.
Socio-Cultural Frameworks of Institutionalization of Political Practices and Types of Societal Development (II)

It is the “Protestant”, the “Orthodox” and the “Buddhist” types of political architecture that are considered in this second part of the article (for its first part see the “Polis”, 2002, №.4). According to the author’s conclusions, the “Protestant” architecture (when the symbolic figure of a “chieftain” is primary as related to the figure of a “shaman”) is characterized by high adaptability to unstable environment and by faults in case of stabilization of the latter. The degree of adaptability of the “Orthodox” architecture (when domination of one or of the other of the two figures is determined situationally) to environmental changes and of its stability in a balanced environment is to a great extent occasioned by a concrete correlation of forces in the competition of the two hierarchies. The “Buddhist” architecture (when these two figures do not interact and are joined exclusively by common social environment) is internally balanced both in a stable and in a changing environment, and its main problem is the gap between the normative stock and the practices. To estimate the heuristic potential of the presented model, one might turn to the analysis, by the author, of the processes that were taking place on the territory of the former Soviet Union, from the angle of political architecture.