This study explores the distinct characteristics and roles of
“conservative” and “progressive” narratives as part of an ambivalent process of diachronically organizing symbolic collective representations and exploring their influence on the political positioning of national communities. The digitalization of political communications has increased the variability of “temporal representations.” New approaches are thus needed to frame the conflict between tradition and innovation within the political and cultural dynamics of contemporary actors. Political elites across national communities are influenced by their
various perceptions of the pace of political change and their expectations of the “present” and “future.” They employ different criteria for what constitutes a “recurrence” or “continuity.” It is therefore increasingly important to understand the relationship between “temporal regimes” in political memory and the processes of traditionalization within the binary coding of political communications as “conservative” or “progressive.” Temporal regimes in political communications are shaped by a trend toward homogenizing a community’s temporal representations, which fosters more stable conditions for integrating perceptions of the past, present, and future. Traditionalization is critical in institutionalizing and maintaining models of political solidarity. It
serves as an essential cultural resource for the temporal structuring of the political sphere and countering political inversion and arbitrariness by political actors. The crisis in the temporal regime of the “modern era,” as articulated by contemporary globalist elites, has significantly heightened the risks of political asynchronicity within the national memory of modern communities. Political elites and other actors are increasingly losing the ability to effectively control traditionmaking, often replacing it with radical conservative traditionalization or progressivism. Drawing on the theoretical and practical insights of modern cultural sociology and political anthropology, the authors propose new theoretical approaches to understanding the role of temporal dimensions in the reproduction of political order within the context of neoliberal digitalization strategies.