If in the sociology of Western countries (primarily in the United States) in the 1940–1970s there was only one special sociological and regulatory theory (sociology of organizations), then in our country there were two – sociology of organizations and sociology of management. To explain this incident, the author analyzes how the development of any special sociological theories is related to the idea of the status of sociology as a science and the conditions for their formation, as well as how and why these conditions and status changed in our country and in the West. It is the different basic theoretical foundations that predetermined the difference in the set of special socio-regulatory theories. The loss by Western sociology in the last 30–40 years of the status of a full-fledged sociological theory focused on the knowledge of objective social processes (associated with the rejection of the Parsonian-Mertonian theoretical scheme) also removes the question of using the term “special sociological theory” (and even more so “sociological regulatory theory”). In Russian sociology, where the division into general and special sociological theories has been preserved, the task of adjusting the subject of this science arises. The author offers a version of such an adjustment: in his opinion, the subject of sociology as a science is the volume (measure) of changes in the social order, the excess of which leads to the destruction of social formations that effect the change.