Methodological Potential of the History of Political and Legal Doctrines

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The paper is not devoted to the problems of methodological framework in the traditional sense of the word. It is difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to find in the intellectual history of mankind a thinker who would not dwell on law and the state, other political and legal institutions. They all were guided by their own methodology. We assume that this could happen even at the subconscious level. The emphasis in this paper is not on what methods were used in the study of the essence of political and legal institutions, but on completely different aspects. Specifically, the focus is made on the methodological component (potential) of the history of political and legal doctrines. The peculiarity of this science and academic discipline is that it has accumulated enormous experience in understanding the state and legal construction on a global scale, and not only in relation to a particular country or continent. Economy and ideology constitute the basis of any civilization, country and state. The aim is to draw attention to the methodological potential (possibilities) of the history of political and legal doctrines. In this branch of scientific knowledge, we can find not only theoretical models of interest for research. The most important thing is that the history of state construction illustrates to us the experience of introducing theoretical constructions into real social practices. In other words, the methodology is interpreted in the article not from a cognitive point of view, but somewhat more broadly, in a close «doctrine — practice» combination.