The monograph analyses Russian political science research on civil society and reveals two approaches to civil society as a political phenomenon - anthropological and institutional. The author proposes to integrate modern achievements of the political theory of civil society into studies of political regionalism - a new scientific trend of the Russian political science, and on the basis of the considered methodological approaches to develop a toolkit enabling to identify and analyze civil society indicators in the system of regional political development. The structure of civil society as a political phenomenon is characterized and the prospects for studying the participation of civil society in the process of formation and implementation of social policy in the region are substantiated