Political regime - the nature of understanding

Among the categories of political science, one of the central places is the concept of a political regime. Before considering the content of this category, one should make one reservation, without which clarification of the essence of the political regime will be erroneous and scientifically unjustified.

The fact is that the political regime is organically connected with such an important category of political science as the political system. Within the framework of ordinary thinking, in journalism and other pseudo-scientific interpretations, a certain stereotype of understanding the political regime has emerged as something that has a clearly estimated character. That is, if one speaks about something positive in political reality, for example, about a political system that should be positively presented to the reader (listener), as a rule, they use the notion of a political system in the context.

And another approach, when describing political realities with a given negative attitude, uses the category of political regime. This view is completely erroneous, it has nothing to do with the scientific approach to political science analysis. The fact is that modern political science treats the political system in two ways. In one of them, the political system is a realistic mechanism for the exercise of power in a particular state, at one level or another.

In accordance with generally accepted characteristics, political systems are classified, and one of the most common classifications is the allocation of a democratic type of political system, authoritarian and totalitarian. Throughout its existence, the political system can be in different states, that is, be more democratic or acquire features of an authoritarian-totalitarian type. So, it is this particular state of the political system of a particular state in a specific historical period that characterizes the category - the political regime. However, it does not bear any estimated loads, but only records the state of the political system of a given society at a particular moment in time. For example, we lived for a long time within the framework of the Soviet political system, which was practically unchanged throughout its historical time. However, depending on who was in power, and what political atmosphere was formed in society, we singled out a "thaw" regime (N. Khrushchev, the Stalin regime, the stagnation regime (L. Brezhnev), the perestroika regime (M. Gorbachev).

Proceeding from this approach, the regime is a derivative phenomenon from the political system and is understood as a certain set of specific parameters of political, ideological, economic and social structures that ensure the exercise of power in a given society at a given time.

During the formation of modern political knowledge, a fairly adequate and, to some extent, a universal list of criteria by which the political regimes are classified is formed. However, the key principle in the classification of a particular regime is the understanding that it reflects the properties of a political system, and therefore the same type selection techniques that are used in the classification of political systems can and should apply to it.

The main modern political regimes are classified on the basis of such criteria as the measure of the exercise of power, the ways of recruiting power, the nature of the interactions of power and society, the characteristics of prohibitions that exist in society, the role of ideology, the type of political leadership, the role of parties, the place of suppression bodies in the system of power and Others. In accordance with these criteria, it is most common to divide political regimes into democratic, totalitarian and authoritarian ones. It should be borne in mind that there is practically no political system that exists in a "pure form", that is, it possessed the characteristics of some one type of regime. As a rule, all regimes existing in political reality have an integrative character and combine the signs of different types.