3. THE INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS
Institutional mechanisms are in place to stimulate graduate students and faculty members to engage in research on policy issues and/or to follow the policy implications of research previously conducted without having paid special attention to policy aspects. CEU faculty members have been given the possibility to take one year off with full pay as “policy fellows” and concentrate on research about regionally relevant policy issues in continuation of their previous, “normal” research. As a rule, when contracts for faculty positions are written-out, mention is made that CEU encourages its academic staff to engage in policy research.

For the pursuit of policy research CEU established several non-teaching units focusing on policy issues from different perspectives.  The Center for Policy Studies (CPS) was established in 2000 as the “the institutional vehicle for creating a close partnership between research and policy” . Working for “better government and administration in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union through public policy research and advocacy”, CPS carries out research projects, develops materials for teaching and training, offers support to the CEU Department of Public Policy in delivering the MA in Public Policy and sponsors policy research in transition and emerging democracies .  CPS has published several volumes of policy research, runs its own policy papers series and offers an on-line library of policy documents from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union . The results of research conducted at CPS are used by international or local NGOs, governmental or intergovernmental organizations.
The CEU Center for EU Enlargement Studies was established in 2005 and it is focused on analyzing the lessons of the last EU enlargements as well as on research on future enlargements. If a few years ago CEU had the rare opportunity not only to study the emergence of a new constitutional landscape but also to help with drafting new constitutions in individual countries of the region, a new opportunity is being turned currently into another ambitious regional project, in which the Center for EU Enlargement Studies plays a central role, by contributing to formulate and asses specific policies of a major regional and global player, the European Union. Chaired by a former EU commissioner, the Center completed several “applied” research projects focusing on the emergence and potential impact of EU’s neighborhood policy . This research is to be complemented with other activities (e.g. advocacy), intended to have an impact not only on the researchers’ talk about this subject but to contribute to shaping the EU neighborhood policy itself and its implementation at the outskirts of the Union which overlap with “CEU’s region”.

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