The concept of “the political”: content, scope, functions

Politics, state, government, bureaucracy, law, etc. as institutions, war, revolution, elections, lawmaking, etc. as processes, sociological polling, collection, storage, presentation and dissemination of information, digitalization, lobbying, corruption, etc. as technologies are hyponyms, that is, concepts expressing a private essence in relation to another, more general concept – hyperonym. Such a common concept for them is political. And a deep understanding of its meaning and content is the initial condition for their scientific research. Today, society has not developed a socially significant and generally accepted understanding of the political. In modern discourse, it has a fairly broad interpretation, characterized by multivariance and ambiguity. At the same time, its meaning and content are often deliberately and purposefully distorted and distorted. On this basis, they sometimes talk about politics as an extremely contradictory concept. The article presents an experience of operationalization of the concept of “political”. It offers the author’s definition of the political, reveals its originality, its relationship with politics and its role in understanding and describing the sphere of politics. An attempt is made to identify criteria of politicality, to reveal the content, scope and functions of the title concept.