This article presents an applied model for assessing political stability in the regions of the Russian Federation that was periodically used in practice during the period 2011–2016. The model assumes that a dangerous (critical) violation of the regional equilibrium, which is identifiable with stability, is observed in cases when regional structures of executive power (represented by the head of the region and his administration) lose control over five key resources: administrative, legal, economic, social, information and interpersonal. On the basis of the model under examination, the author offers some recommendations for improving regional policy in modern Russia and optimizing the administrative techniques used by state authority.

This paper is a conceptual development of the study of worldview as a term and a social phenomenon. The work refers to the existing concepts of ‘worldview’ and its structure, reveals the actual features of the public and expert perception of related categories (‘ideology’, ‘myth’, ‘utopia’), and also suggests directions for the development of the existing academic discourse related to research in an extremely important problem field. The structure of the worldview is described through the pentabasis model, which makes it possible to build value connections between the elements of the worldview (‘person’, ‘ family’, ‘society’, ‘state’, ‘country’) and identify the principles that correspond to these value connections. The final part of the article describes the institutional framework of the pentabasis, which consists of a system of symbols, ideas, rules, practices and rituals. This approach outlines a possible direction for the development of the existing academic discourse and will allow further verification of fundamental hypotheses related to the key worldview guidelines of Russian society, its value matrix and the possible institutional framework of the latter. The pentabasis model can be in demand to formulate a proposals focused on applied public governance decisions.

The development of disciplinary knowledge led to the fragmentation of the social sciences and humanities and the destruction of a unified categorical and conceptual framework. In the early modern, attempts were made to integrate these disciplines, including through political science. Currently, political science has extensive experience working with political concepts and is therefore capable of facilitating the “synchronization” of the categorical and conceptual frameworks of the disciplines comprising the unified social sciences and humanities core of Russian higher education. This article examines the historical and value-based approaches to the study of political concepts. Both approaches demonstrate the sensitivity of concepts to social and political contexts. Therefore, due to the dynamism of contexts, the system of political concepts is constantly changing, refining, and adjusting. This should be addressed within the framework of studying the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities core. The integration of social sciences and humanities is also facilitated by the shift from the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge to the acquisition of wisdom. Strengthening the university’s mediating role will allow political science to develop consensus models adequate to political realities.