Civilizational approach in political science: peculiarities of development in the new social reality

The article reveals the peculiarities of development of the civilizational approach in the political science, associated with the changed conditions of the society's functioning. The relevance of the research is determined by the inter-civilizational contradictions, which are aggravating at present. The authors put forward an assumption that the contemporary Russian society is an infantile one. The paper reviews existing definitions of the 'civilization' concept, notes the narrowing of the concept's scope, which happened as far as the social science and the humanities differentiated.