Nikiforov S.V. Outposts of intercivilizational interaction between Russia and Mongolia as a subject field of institutional and civilizational approaches. Political science (RU). 2026, N 3, P. 68–87. DOI: http: ...

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: https://www.politnauka.ru/jour/article/view/1369 (дата обращения 14.09.2026)

Abstract

This article attempts to bridge institutional and civilizational political science in order to examine the outposts of inter-civilizational contact–areas where different civilizational spaces intersect. It does so through a case study of regions where Russian and Mongolian civilizational domains overlap. Civilization approach in international studies is becoming of paramount importance because of civilizational positions are fixed in Russian and international political discourse and legal documents, as well as in the international system of dynamic and conflict transformation. The study of these phenomena requires new methodological tools that overcome the limitations of the classical civilization approach and geopolitics. The author shows that institutional political science allows to focus on hierarchical identities and practical political actors, including attempts to construct civilizational identity as political and civilization-based political institutions, while civilizational political science makes it possible to take into account the superimposition of civilizational spaces on each other, to highlight “outpost intercivilizational interactions”, which are not seen solely as geopolitical cleavages, leading to civilization clashes. The cases of Transbaikalia, Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia, demonstrate the multiple character of the identities of the inhabitants of these regions of Russia, which simultaneously exist in the Russian and Mongolian civilizational spaces, with the common Russian “citizen” identity coexisting with regional self-awareness. The author highlights the directions of activity of political actors, characteristic of these regions and especially the civilizational processes occurring in them. Such attention is paid to the practice of maintaining ethno-confessional peace, the specific hierarchical identity of the local population, the orientation of young people to the differences in values, the place of intercivilizational dialogue in the life of the regions, and the prospects of becoming a major growth point for Russian public diplomacy. The author concludes that the positive experience of the intercivilizational dialogue in the outpost can become the basis for the successful development of Russia’s internal and external policy in the conditions of the formation of a polycentric world order of state-civilizations.