The CSP acquired the status of a department at the New Bulgarian University by a decision of the Academic Council, dated 21 February, 1995.

Until 2002 the CSP ran a separate NGO, the Oblik Association, as our publishing and research arm. We decided to re-incorporate these activities into the "mother ship" and closed down the Oblik in 2004.
Also in 2002 we devolved a then department of ours, called the Political Academy, which was designed to educate and train elected officials since 1996. The Academy became a legally separate body over 2002-2003.

From the beginning we worked on the theory - since then proven itself to be correct - that countries such as Bulgaria can become modern, open and democratic only if carefully structured from the bottom-up: from the communities (municipalities) to national legislation. More than nine-tenths of our work takes place outside the capital Sofia, which means we are constantly on the road; and for this we are occasionally referred to as the "travelling show".

Our first major projecs were to do with the resolution and prevention of conflicts between citizens and government, and between local communities and the central authorities. We then moved to encouraging dialogue and cooperation between citizens and government. This required, increasingly, research, training of people on the ground and establishing institutions of citizen participation in decision-making. Since the late 1990s we have been increasingly drawn into working for citizen participation in policy at the local (municipal, regional) level.
Issues or representation and participation of vulnerable groups (ethnic minorities, but not only) take up increasing proportions of our time and efforts. We are also gradually drawn into participating in writing legislation on subjects we have a recognised capacity in, which are mostly to do with open and accountable government.

At the New Bulgarian University we teach courses which are based on our civic society-building experiences on the ground.

In a personal capacity, the CSP founder and Chairman, Dr Evgenii Dainov, was Chair of the Board of Open Society Foundation-Sofia for 1998-2001.

We have helped set up and train civic groups and NGOs in Macedonia, Serbia and Slovakia.

Depending on available funding we try to end every project in the field with a book collection (sometimes we even raise money for an English-language version) setting our results, models and recommendations. On the strength of such analyses since 2003 we find ourselves increasingly being part of international, EU- and OSCE-organised research efforts into the subject areas we have a track record in.