The Centre for Liberal Strategies is a think tank in a culture where "think tank" is an untranslatable word.
An independent policy institute in an environment where both politics and policy are translated with one word "политика". An analytical bull in the China shop of practical politics.
To present the CLS we have to begin with its name. After a lot of thought, we decided that the most appropriate way to present the meaning of our name is - backwards.
So we start with "strategies". There is one and only one reason why we are in the business of strategies. It is the following: when confronted with the highly irritating question of how in practice what we recommend may be achieved, we want to be in the position of the owl who advised the rabbit to become a lion, and on the question how, replied with a touch of disgust: "Oh, this is not our business, we deal only with strategies!."
We continue with "liberal". This term is related to our philosophy about our organization's image management. In a sense, while we feel strongly about the meaning of "strategies", we have decided to let everyone else think of "liberal" whatever they like. In fact, we are so liberal that actually some of us are natural-born conservatives.
Finally, the tough one - "centre". Why centre, and why the British spelling? At least three reasons. First, when you are in the periphery, the only appropriate name is "centre". Second, we could not think of anything that seems further from "liberal" than "centre". Finally, about the British spelling. As of the moment of this publication, the research on the reasons for it is still inconclusive.
Rakovski St. 135 A
BGR-1000 Sofia
E-mail: cls@cls-sofia.org
Tel: 0035929818926 / 0035929861433
Fax: 0035929818925
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