The Politicisation of Civilizational Dialogue: A Comparative Study of Russia and China through a Three-Stage Institutionalization Model

This article examines how Russia and China have appropriated the concept of "Dialogue of Civilisations." Originally a civil society framework that received formal international institutional expression through UN General Assembly Resolution 56/6 (2001), the concept rested on the premise that genuine inter-civilizational exchange must operate independently of state power. Over two decades, both states have systematically converted this concept into an instrument of state policy—yet they have followed structurally opposite institutional paths. The article proposes a three-stage institutionalization model consisting of discursive extraction, normative codification, and constitutional consolidation with insulation. It introduces the concept of "norm production" to describe cases where states act as originators rather than recipients of norms. Applied to Russia, the model traces a complete introversion-defense pathway culminating in the 2020 constitutional amendments. Applied to China, it traces an extroversion-projection pathway extending from the 2004 Beijing Forum to the inaugural Ministerial Conference on Global Civilization Dialogue held in Beijing in 2025. The comparative analysis yields three findings. Russia has completed all three stages; China remains at Stage Two, without constitutional embedding. What determines the institutional form of Politicisation is not civilizational content itself but the structure of external normative pressure: direct institutional threats drive introversion, while diffuse discursive competition drives extroversion. Constitutional insulation is not a binary state but a spectrum, whose effectiveness depends on the stability of elite consensus and on the degree of alignment between constitutional provisions and ordinary legislation.