№ 1 - 2007
Panov P.V.
Political Community: Construction and Institutionalization

The article contains analysis of the heuristic potential of the concept “political community” as applied to the research of “static characteristics” of the Russian polity. On considering the most important aspects of the notion of political community, as well as a number of problems related to the institutionalization of such community (in particular, effects of the “import of institutions”), the author comes to the conclusion that the cognitive value of the said concept consists first of all in that it is not “external” (“essentialist”), but “internal” (“constructionist”) characteristics of a social entity, the subjective dynamism of the institutionalization of political order, that it fixes in itself, allowing, thus, to analyze and explain the extent of stability of this or that polity, the possibilities and the limits of its transformation.