№ 3 - 2005
Ilyin M.V.
Phenomenon of Political Time

One may hardly come across such a subject of political research, adequate perception of which would not require its being temporally evolved or interpreted. Meanwhile political scientists, as well as politicians and the men in the street, usually look upon politics and political phenomena as “things” in point of fact not differing from physical bodies. Considering “return” of time into politics a most important condition of overcoming such kind of “naturalistic fallacy”, the author stresses that this necessitates not only that the time factor be constantly taken into account, but also minimum distinctness of the idea of the very phenomenon of political time. It is analysis of this phenomenon that constitutes the subject of the presented article. The author characterizes the political and the temporal, examines different dimensions and scopes of temporality and, finally, turns to the problem of taking into account the time factor in political studies. Among the now available research instruments fit to a greater or lesser degree for studying the effects of combining temporal phenomena of different scope and complexity, he singles out the crisis model proposed within the framework of the Stanford project, and the so-called “funnel of causality”.