The archetypal mission of political institutions in the postmodern (multipolar) world

National and international political institutions in the context of the second wave of transformational processes at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries (after the Great Depression of the first half of the 20th century) are permanently in a state of transition in the modern world. With the affirmation of postmodernist tendencies worldwide, the psychological factor is becoming increasingly important in solving social problems, as noted by French psychologist S. Moscovici. The real influence of the archetypes of the collective unconscious on society is growing. These archetypes provide a kind of backdrop to the history of human society. In particular, we are talking about such hypothetical archetypes of political institutions as ‘polis’, ‘republic’, ‘empire’, ‘polity’, ‘monarchy’, ‘sacred power’, ‘anarchy’, etc. At the same time, political institutions no longer provide, as they once did, prosperity and political freedom, the opportunity to have a long and healthy life, during which you enjoy the benefits of freedom and prosperity with the opportunity to live in a society where corruption is minimised and honesty and transparency are valued. This raises a number of questions: ‘Which type of politicians are more destructive to institutions: hypocrites, cynics, idealists or pragmatists?’; ‘Is open corruption a consequence of the absence of civil society?’; ‘What is the right balance between private initiative, public interest, freedom and equality?’; ‘What are the achievable goals of social policy?’; ‘Where is the compromise between maximising private wealth and minimising social tension?’; ‘How can friction between religious communities be minimised?’; ‘How can conflicts within and between states be resolved?’; ‘Is it possible to avoid wars, which are the equifinal moment of the general systemic transformation of society?’ etc. These questions relate to the archetypal mission of political institutions. The purpose of the article is to clarify the archetypal mission of political institutions in the context of the modern – postmodern (multipolar) world. The methods employed by the authors are, in particular, the problem-chronological method made it possible to establish the implementation of the archetypal mission of political institutions in a historical (temporal) dimension. The systematic method revealed the relationship between the concepts of ‘mission’ and ‘function’ of a political institution in the present. The comparative method provided an analysis of changes in political regimes, their ideological attitudes and political institutions within the social system as a whole. The scientific novelty of the article is the coverage of the archetypal mission of political institutions in the context of the contradictory nonlinear process of the formation of a postmodern (multipolar) world.