Abstract
Thinkers have used the term «institute» for centuries. At the same time, there was no more or less clear and uniform definition of that category for a long time. Even today there are unsolved oppositions in the area, and the dynamics of ideas is very high. The article deals with the interpretation and operationalization of one of the main concepts of political science – «political institution». The relevance of the work is caused by insufficient methodological definiteness of the term in modern Russian political science. Such insufficiency makes it impossible to study the structure of the Russian political system and the process of its development and the issues that appear during the institutionalization of political life. The scientific novelty of the article can be traced in the establishment of general trends in evolution, the idea of institution and identification of the main steps of that process. The article considers and characterizes differences between the philosophical and scientific views on institutions. Base periods with their own specifics are also considered within each of them. It describes the influence that the basic approaches of classical political science (systematical, structural-functional, behavioral, etc.) had on the development of institutional research. The modern neo-institutional step of the development of ideas about institutions and the formation of a «new look» at it is considered separately and specifically. At the end of the article, the relevant definition of the main concept is provided.
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