The article analyzes the problem of development discourses in political science and related fields. The dominant concept of sustainable development faces serious problems, which prompts the scientific community to search for alternatives. Based on the analysis, the author states that in modern conditions it is increasingly important to develop new approaches to development on the basis of existing ones for their subsequent implementation in political practice. Paying attention to the philosophical-historical (historiosophic) approach to development, the representatives of which were such German classical idealist philosophers as Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the author points out the inherent historical finalism of this approach. Special attention is paid to the analysis of linear and civilizational approaches in their diversity. Much attention is paid to the civilizational approach, which proceeds from the plurality of cultures, which is more in line with the idea of multipolarity. In addition, cyclic and wave concepts of world development are becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to linear progressivism. In the framework of these concepts, a break in the paradigm of world development is associated with the ideas of singularity, the onset of which is predicted for the period of 2040s-2050s. According to the author, none of the presented approaches can be the only correct one to be realized in practice. This means the need for a rational complex synthesis of different intellectual platforms in order to harmoniously adapt them to the current and future political realities at the national and international levels.