The most important reform movement of the last quarter of a century within public administration has been the New Public Management (NPM). In defining NPM, it has proven useful (such as in Pollitt and Dan 2013) to view it as a two-level phenomenon.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the public administration (PA) development in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from an ex post perspective covering the past three decades. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews prior literature on CEE and PA...