The article presents the concept of “president” in Russia and in foreign countries. Preliminary proposition: in the current context the political status of the President of the Russian Federation acts primary deterrent of Russian polity development making it obsolete the concept of presidency in Russia needs both institutional and functional correction based on the international democratic experience and main features of the Post-modern society.

Taking into account institutional and functional role of the concept of presidency in the countries with developmental nature of polities and main features of the Post-modern society it is pointed out that the concept of presidency is losing its supremacy in political systems of modern democratic countries and obtaining a «primus inter pares» (“equal among equals”) status. Reduction of the role of the presidency concept in western polities is attributed to both the necessity of accrescence of authoritative potential of collective representative bodies that exercise conciliatory and articulating functions more effectively in polycentric mosaic constructions, and to the representative individualized bodies’ ability to produce permanent social conflict and to irrationalize political process in order to reinforce their own political potential by means of disadvantages of parliamentary systems.

The author stresses that the ongoing Russian political process designed to consolidate the role of the concept of presidency in state mechanism discords with the political experience of democratic countries and general civilizational vector of political systems development. The current situation may lead to a political crisis, main reasons thereof might be the following: (a) the excessive pressure on the presidency as a result of complication of social structure of the society and president’s deprival of the opportunity to harmonize the interests of wide social groups (b) aut ocratization of the political system resulting in inequalities in “state-state” and «state-society» systems, and civic institutions’ removing from the public security enforcement sphere (c) maintaining the political system prone to conflicts due to the president’s interest in reproduction of the intolerant political environment (d) degradation of Russian polity and loss of its competitiveness.

While preparing the article the following research methods have been used: dialectical, legal, comparative, historical, systematic, synergetic, and formal logical.