The article explores the causes and possible consequences of the critical instability of the modern world order, and the emerging fundamental institutional transformation arising from the search for ways to overcome this crisis of the modern world system. The analysis focuses on the of theoretical and methodological basis for a deeper understanding of the nature of this crisis and the identification of “points of growth” for new forms of interaction between the main subjects of world development, as well as new, more differentiated principles of global universalism, more sensitive to the cultural diversity of communities integrated into the global system of communities and of their political actors. The author discusses the phenomenon of “new powers”, the complicated and symbiotic nature of their political organization, including transboundary formats for the distribution of control impulses, as well as their participation in the formation of new patterns of the world order. This analysis contributes to the formulation of a hypothesis about the essence (content) of a new system of international relations and territorial division of the world. Its essence: the exhaustion of the stability potential of the international system of national-territorial states gave rise in the course of historical development to irreversible dysfunction – a unipolar world order (the “lone superpower” syndrome). Overcoming this dysfunction is the main point on global transformation agenda in all its aspects: political, socio-economic, cultural, etc. Researchers studying these processes may have to reconsider the traditional optics of analysis, its conceptual bases and paradigmatic approaches in a critical manner.