In its present issue, the journal publishes the first part of A.A.Degtyaryov's article; it deals with such section within the sphere of political studies, as theory of political decision making (PDM). The author discusses in detail available approaches to, as well as concepts of PDM processes, presuming that there exist two main meta-approaches (the descriptive-explicatory and the normative- prescriptive ones) in the research of this range of problems. The material exposed is arranged in chronological order, which, in the author's opinion, most vividly represents the genesis of the thought and the specificity of the views proper to scientists belonging, respectively, to different methodological schools, from those of "behaviouralism" and "limited rationality" to those of "incrementalism" and "comprehensive rationality".