Paper Titles & Abstracts

The EU's Public Procurement regime has been a longstanding aspect of European economic liberalization. Constituted by a series of Commission Directives, it is one of the core elements of the Single European Market agenda. While the institutional structures that support the implementation of these Directives in each member state differ (with some states heavily centralizing their procurement practices), it is common for the suppliers (both potential and actual) to bear the burden of enforcing the Directives. As the Commission is proposing to simplify the enforcement of the regime with a new Directive, it is timely to examine it afresh.This paper draws upon theories of 'Market systems of Governance' (Scharpf, Borzel, Mayntz) and 'Comparative Capitalisms' literature (Hancke, Crouch, Bruff) to examine the institutions, institutional complementarities, and the consequent effect on the implementation of the regime.The paper questions whether there is a consistent structural relationship between the institutional frameworks present and the private actors that enforce the Directives. The primary research used for this paper is a dataset drawn from Commission publications and new information from the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), collated by the author. An econometric model is used to facilitate the analysis firstly by deriving a counterfactual case, and then examining the 'real' situation. Finally, the paper assesses the whether private actor governance can reasonably facilitate public policy goals. The conclusions point to a disconnect between the heuristic and realized perspectives on market governance.