The last decades a transformation of the public sector under the label of New Public Management was seen. NPM was especially supported for its novel ideas on including private sector practices, such as performance management, in the delivery of public sector services and for its idea to substitute the public sector by the private sector. With the benefit of hindsight one can conclude now that the success rates of such reforms varied. Whether the role of government and its strength is really determinative in shaping optimal models for service delivery is one of the main questions in the current debate and is also one of the reasons for inviting a number of scholars from countries in transition, that is, outside the usual realm of investigation, to tell about and analyze the developments in this regard in their home-countries. First of all, these are scholars from the so-called BRICS-countries, that strange group of nation-states, from several parts of the world of which the first letters of their names constitute the word BRICS, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Secondly, scholars from Central and Eastern Europe were invited to write about the experiences in their countries. The central question these scholars focus on is how two New Public Management Tools evolved in their countries, that is, performance management and involving the private sector in previously public service delivery and what problems these countries encountered.
