The thesis tackles two major components of modern statehood; the creation of markets, and public procurement. The context is the European Union’s efforts to create an integrated market for public procurement as an effort to bind the notion of what it means to realise the state into a single concept within the European project. The thesis in particular studies the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) that has been a major component of the modern version of the procurement market and constitutes a major effort to control the discursive construction of the act of procurement. The thesis concludes that through market structures there exists the opportunity for perpetuation of ideational hegemony. This may have a significant impact on the conceptualisation of statehood in modern Europe.

A supplier review system can play a significant role in ensuring the enforcement of procurement rules through its deterrent and redress effects. This thesis aims at providing a critical analysis of the current Chinese supplier review system and identifying and evaluating options for improvement of the Chinese system, based on the analysis of provisions on supplier review contained in the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement, the GPA, the EU Remedies Directives and APEC Non-Binding Principles on Government Procurement. This thesis first discusses key characteristics of national supplier review system, concerning forum for review, standing and procedures, and the remedies, provided in the Model Law and the other three international instruments; and then examines these main aspects of the current Chinese supplier review system. After critically analysing the current Chinese system, it has been found there are a number of important deficiencies in this system, in particular, there is uncertainty over the forum for review, the whole dispute resolution process can be quite lengthy and the available remedies are ineffective. These problems have hampered the effectiveness of the system and made it inconsistent with the international standards which may soon apply or currently actually apply to China, namely the GPA and APEC NBPs. To make the Chinese supplier review system truly effective and also comply with the existing/forthcoming international obligations, the author recommends reforms that aim to be effective yet capable of realistic achievement and also workable in the particular context of Chinese circumstances and the existing position in China. These include providing a unified supplier review system to all complaints regarding government procurement process, improving the current sequential tiered review system, revising the current provisions on standing and the time limit for initiation, offering clear rules on remedies and deleting unreasonable sanctions on the complaining supplier.

This thesis provides an empirical analysis of data generated by ComprasNet, the online procurement bidding platform developed and used by the Brazilian federal government. ComprasNet is a large bidding platform used since 2001 by more than 2200 public purchasing units who list around one million lots each year. Over 70,000 unique bidders have participated in these auctions. In 2010, 46 percent of all procurement for the federal government was conducted through ComprasNet, totaling R$ 27 billion, or 0.7 percent of Brazil’s GDP. In short, these auctions represent a large share of federal tenders and a substantial amount is contracted through them each year. Chapter 1 provides an overview of ComprasNet. After reviewing the literature on various topics which this dissertation contributes to, I describe the institutional background surrounding ComprasNet. I then present the baseline data used throughout the remainder of this dissertation. Chapter 2 addresses one important aspect of designing an online ascending auction, namely how to end the auction. ComprasNet varied its ending rules over time, providing an unique opportunity to test theories of bidder behaviour, as well as assessing the impact of ending rules on auction outcomes. Chapter 3 analyses a two-stage auction format which ComprasNet uses. Two-stage designs have long been proposed by the theoretical literature, but there are virtually no empirical works apart from experimental studies. Finally, chapter 4 analyses a bid preference programme targeted at small and micro enterprises (SMEs). The programme consists of setting aside eligible lots for SMEs. We first use eligibility rules as a source of exogenous variation in the treatment assignment to estimate the effects of the programme on auction outcomes. We then set up an open auction model with endogenous entry and asymmetric bidders and estimate the model’s primitives. In particular, we estimate entry costs, which we interpret as red tape costs.

When choosing and applying the award criteria in the context of public procurement procedures, contracting authorities exercise their discretionary powers with a view to selecting the most economically advantageous tender. The importance of the use that contracting authorities make of their margin of discretion is directly related to the result of any public procurement procedure: the level of satisfaction of the contracting authorities’ needs provided by the works/supply/service contract concluded with the winning tenderer. Despite the tendency for public procurement regulation to focus on procedural rules (‘how to buy’), rather than the actual outcome of the procurement activity itself (‘what to buy’), there are substantive requirements derived from legislative sources, as well as soft law and jurisprudence, that somehow structure the contracting authorities’ decision making freedom. Although there is no standard unit that allows for the measurement of contracting authorities’ margin of discretion and its variation, this thesis aims to identify factors which contribute either to increase or to reduce the said margin. In other words, it is proposed to highlight the elements which determine the expansion or the limitation of the referred discretionary powers. The thesis concludes that despite the different national regulatory approaches to this topic under the common EU legal framework, the practice in the Member States covered by this thesis seems to indicate that contracting authorities exercise their discretionary powers in a (unknowingly) similar way.

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This study examines policies and practices in procurement and commissioning which aim to maximise the value of public organisations’ spend by asking for contractors to deliver social value (community benefits) as added value, over and beyond the core requirement. It draws from case studies of revealing practices to i) contribute to the definition and interpretation of the term ‘value’ in procurement and commissioning, ii) identify a theoretical model of how community (societal) benefits can be delivered as ‘added value’, aimed at improving public procurement and commissioning practices and iii) explore the implications of this model for the current debate on ‘Public Value’, examining how it might contribute to policy and practice in creating and delivering value in public services delivery.

This research investigates how public service organisations (PSO’s) use public procurement, referred to as the acquisition of goods and services by PSOs, to analyse the processes through which a PSO acquires innovative goods and services in order to improve public services. Despite a number of success stories from the literature (Phillips et al, 2007; Uyarra, 2010; Yeow et al, 2011), PSOs struggle to procure and implement innovation (e.g. Uyarra et al, 2014a). One major reason for this lack of innovation procurement and adoption is the nature of governance of the procurement process in the public sector (Rolfstam, 2009).Drawing from the public sector and organisational governance literature, this research develops a conceptual framework to investigate how internal, managerial and external governance affects the willingness and ability of PSOs to procure innovative goods and services. External governance refers to overarching bodies of organisations and institutions situated outside the PSO which influences policy and organisational arrangements of PSOs. Managerial governance refers to organisational actors and other stakeholders brought together to form governing boards which directly control and support the PSO leader. Internal governance refers to the day-to-day operations and delivery of a public service. This research adopts a positivist approach with a deductive inquiry process. Using the English secondary education system as the PSO under investigation this research utilises a mixture of quantitative (survey to two types of secondary schools in England) and qualitative methods (four case studies). The findings of this research indicate that these three governance levels influence PSOs procuring innovation in a number of ways. External governance can determine the decision-making process and what can and cannot be procured to improve the service and how budgets are used for innovations. External governance can also act as a source of expertise and knowledge, create opportunities and incentivise PSOs by establishing conditions, mechanisms and access to large scale programmes and initiatives. Similarly, managerial governance entails actors to act as gatekeepers in the decision making process, assisting in procurements by leveraging expertise from other positions and improving the chances of procuring innovation through partnership arrangements with internal governance actors. At the internal governance level, procurement of innovation is greatly improved when ‘champions’ support innovative solutions and when staff responsible for the delivery of the service (i.e. teachers) specify requirements. This research makes three contributions. Firstly, it develops a conceptual framework for public procurement of innovation (PPI) with governance at the centre. Secondly, it adds to the growing body of literature of PPI practice and the barriers faced by PSOs. Finally, this research pays attention to education, a public service sector that has been overlooked by previous studies. Consequently, this research may help policy-makers and practitioners to better understand the governance of PPI.