"Mass Science" at EPSA Conference: the Participant Observation Experience

Major international scientific events have their own specifics for their ideological content, methodological tools, methods of organization, and established academic traditions. At the annual conferences of the European Association of Political Science, this specific was in the overwhelming dominance of quantitative research and a strong emphasis on the methodology of research: the method of processing of natural language, and the "difference-in-difference". The analysis of the conference program was a thought-provoking look into the development of domestic and foreign political science, joined by trends of mass education and, consequently, the development of social science under the influence of the principle of "publish or perish". The EPSA conference manifested such common postmodern scientific trends as the fragmentation of scientific knowledge and the lack of "great meanings", democracy and leveling differences and status, humor, and irony. The non-academic (i.e. social) program, which this year was dedicated to diversity, is growing in importance. There was also a focus on Russian themes in political studies by scientists from the USA and Europe, which is reduced to a very narrow range of problems - mainly to the criticism of the Russian political regime and the study of the role of new media in the protest mobilization of the masses. © 2020.