The article analyzes the processes of actualization of civilizational discourse in modern political science, facing today the challenge of comprehending political development that generates a global crisis. The perception of this discourse today contrasts markedly with the essentially negative attitude of most of the political science community with the still recently. This attitude was, in fact, a desire for a kind of “cancelling” of such discourse, an interpretation of involvement in it as not meeting the criteria of modern approaches to the analysis of politics and therefore reprehensible. Nevertheless, civilizational issues throughout the 20th century attracted the attention of political philosophers and the most insightful political researchers who are trying to advance in the development of ideas about the fundamental diversity of cultural and civilizational foundations for the development of modern society, as well as the about impact of this diversity on the nature of the current crisis of the world order and its likely consequences. One of the most important problem nodes of the study is the contradictory conjugation of concepts that characterize the universalist and particularist approaches to the conceptualization of a civilizational society. The first approach reduces all civilizational issues to the recognition of the legitimacy of talking about just the only - a universal civilization or one that can serve for the world as the only worthy model, an ideal type of social and cultural arrangement. The second approach insists that even within the framework of modern national societies and the territorial states that form them, the persisting cultural and civilizational “otherness” is worthy of the right to continue to exist. Moreover, it often turns out to be an indispensable development resource of these societies. Within the framework of the study, a comparative analysis of the conjugation and latent conflict of these two approaches to the conceptualization of the cultural and civilizational foundations of modern politics is carried out. From a civilizational perspective, the evolutionary limits of universalism and the prospects for the transformation of the world order are discussed.