1. UNIVERSITY MISSION IN POLICY AND GOVERNACE
The case of CEU is as simple as it may be unusual. The engagement with transnational policy and governance issues originates directly from CEU’s mission. This engagement is explicitly articulated in the strategic development plan and reflected in the institutional structure and actual activities of the university; it is revealed in the nature and content of the educational program of CEU, in a large part of the research conducted there, as well as in its outreach activities.

Established in 1991, CEU operates in Budapest, Hungary. A graduate research-intensive university, it enrolls slightly more than 1000 students a year in master’s and doctoral programs in the social sciences, the humanities, and management. Almost 80 countries are represented in the student body, which makes CEU unusually international by any standard, and even more so for Central and Eastern Europe. In some classes there are not even two students from the same country. The academic staff is similarly international.
CEU is a mission-driven university; the mission - to support the development of open societies and democracy in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, by promoting academic excellence, including high level research, and civic commitment - influences deeply the institutional ethos, strategic choices and activities. CEU was established in the years following the fall of communist regimes by a group of intellectuals and former dissidents from Central and Eastern Europe led by George Soros , who also provided generous financial support to the university, including a permanent endowment fund. The founders of the university shared the conviction that countries of the former communist area were facing problems that would be better dealt with by using regional approaches. Hence the idea to establish a university that, while paying attention to national realities, has no national agenda and promotes a comparative transnational approach focusing on this region.
How did policy and governance come into the picture? In the first years, as countries of the region were advancing at different speeds in the post-communist transition process, it was considered that CEU’s mission meant to prepare members of the future elites, using an educational approach formerly unknown in the region, and also (importantly, albeit somewhat only secondarily) to do research in fields that are relevant for this transition: privatization, political systems, human rights, nationalism, constitutional systems, business law, international relations, etc. Campaign 2001, the first formal CEU strategic development plan , states that:
“CEU’s first priority is to train students from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.”
“CEU fosters an environment in which ideas are examined creatively, critically, and comparatively while also serving as an advanced center for research and analysis, preparing its graduates to join the region’s next generation of scholars and leaders.”
It became increasingly clear already during these first years that one way to combine CEU’s aspirations for academic excellence with the ambition to contribute to changes in the region was by focusing on policy. The word “policy” was then included in the extended mission statement of the university, at the same time with CEU’s explicit characterization as a research-intensive university:
“CEU aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, excellence in the creation of new knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences, and excellence in developing the policy implications of both” .
The increasing emphasis on policy was to a large extent a result of CEU’s close association with the open society foundations network, also created by George Soros and which was directly and overtly engaged in building democracy and open societies in the region. Partly following from the dialogue with this network it was decided that the best that CEU could offer to bridge activism  (not exactly the role of the university) with high level research and teaching was in terms of policy, embedded in a comparative approach that tries to integrate the region into a global perspective. With this shift, the original “educational” mission was not abandoned but rather refined to include a clear connection between training elites and a particular focus on policy and policy research. Interest in traditional scholarship and the concern for training high level future academics or simply outstanding professionals in various areas have never been abandoned. But, at the same time, a central aim has been to help prepare research-oriented, knowledgeable leaders, i.e., “new” elites who will lead the efforts to secure democratic governments in the region, develop cooperative structures for economic development, improve the environment, and further the well-being of the region’s citizens.
 How is this particular mission reflected in the daily work of the CEU community?

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