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The article is devoted to the question of the relationship between Modernity and utopia. Modernity is viewed as a special time regime (i.e., a set of socially significant forms of perception of time by people and social groups), which constitutes a number of conditions that open up opportunities and create obstacles for the utopian thinking and the policies it directs, struggle practices, etc. The author identifies three important from the perspective for the existence of utopia conditions. The first condition is the tension between the openness of Modernity to qualitative changes and its desire for self-closure and reduction towards one of its features (rationalization, global capitalism, etc.). The possibilities of utopian thinking in a particular historical situation depend on the predominance of one of these impulses. The second condition is the problematization of any specific utopia against the background of the general process of reflexive self-renewal of modern societies, the appropriation of criticism to oneself and its recoding into the elements of routine management. The third condition is the colonization of time due to the subjectively perceived acceleration of time and loss of control over time, which complicates any thinking outside the everyday facts, including utopian thinking. According to the author's conclusion, these three conditions are interrelated: it is the openness of Modernity to change that causes both the problematization of a specific utopia and the colonization of accelerating time, every moment of which should be spent on changes for the better. In its turn, the colonization of time undermines the possibility of "stopping" it, transferring it into the so-called "messianic time", a time of eventfulness and concreteness.

The aim of the article is to clarify the ontological foundations of the political representation within Franklin Ankersmit's theory in the context of the modern discussion about the crisis of the liberal-democratic project and the political per se. Taking an almost unique position in this discussion, Ankersmit insists on the presence of the political in the contemporary institutions of democratic representation, resorting to the tools of the theory of aesthetics to justify his viewpoint. The authors recognize Ankersmit's approach as a promising direction of the reflection on possible ways out of the political crisis, but at the same time they draw attention to its inherent flaws arising from the insufficient conceptual elaboration of its political and ontological foundations. Ankersmit does not clarify how representational relationships arise and what mechanisms are responsible for maintaining the connection between the representative and the represented. Based on the aesthetic theory of Martin Heidegger, as well as the interpretations of the social contract by Carl Schmitt, Paul Ricœur and Alexan der Filippov, the authors suggest that the theory of social contract can be used as an ontological basis for Ankersmit's concept, and show how the aesthetic approach to the political can be harmonized with this theory and why Ankersmit's criticism of this theory is substantively inaccurate. The authors' arguments demonstrate that the theory of social contract can be articulated in the categories of an aesthetic approach to the political and become its ontological foundation, thereby resolving certain concerns about the origin and functioning of the relations of representation in the society

For the most part, electoral and party research today is centered on the behavior of voters in two or four major clusters that can be conventionally placed on a scale from left to right. On the same scale, there are smaller groups whose value of separation is often questioned. This paper focuses on one of these groups: we consider a segment of voters united on the basis of their support for right-wing liberal parties and try to identify the most significant determinants of their choice. Based on the existing concepts of voting and data from the European Social Survey, 2016–2018, we generalize possible predictors – party and political selfidentification, ideological stances, social setting and material status – up to three theories ('ideological core', 'defectors' and 'winners'), and test their plausibility using regression tools. Modeling results show that for a number of parameters the separation of new subgroup is justified. First, we reject the hypothesis of a strategic non-voting for right-liberals (on the contrary, respondents often "strategically" vote for them rather than for some personally closer party). Second, we find similar characteristics of the voter profile in different European countries; in particular, people who share the values of non-interference (associated with opposition to income redistribution and cultural restrictions) are more inclined to electorally back the liberal right. On the other hand, for a complete picture it is not enough to indicate ideological or cleavage preferences: the fact of voting is strongly influenced by person's socio-economic background, confirming the earlier remarks about certain "privileges" in this electoral segment.