Procurement as Infrastructure

In a new paper co-authored with Nathan Davies (Oxford Internet Institute), we revisit the theoretical conceptualisation of procurement and make the claim that it is infrastructure.

We argue for a fundamental shift in how public procurement is understood: not just as a regulatory or transactional tool, but as a foundational form of infrastructure that shapes state capacity and digital transformation.

This is very much a work in progress — we welcome comments, critiques, and collaboration as we develop it further!

The abstract is as follows:

Public procurement constitutes a fundamental governance mechanism through which states interact with markets. It is a vast and consequential function of government, accounting for approximately one-third of public expenditure in most economies. Existing public management scholarship has predominantly conceptualised procurement through legal-regulatory, economic, or administrative perspectives. Whilst valuable, these approaches insufficiently theorise procurement's role in structuring governance possibilities and enabling or hindering state capacity. This paper advances a novel theoretical intervention by reconceptualizing procurement itself as infrastructure rather than merely as a mechanism for acquiring or outsourcing it. Drawing on Susan Leigh Star's influential work in infrastructure studies (Star, 1999), we systematically analyse how procurement systems—comprising legal frameworks, administrative routines, professional practices, and technological platforms—function as embedded socio-technical infrastructures that enable and constrain governance. Supported by an examination of illustrative UK cases, including the Carillion collapse, Post Office scandal and COVID-19 PPE procurement failures, we argue that these are not isolated implementation failures but manifestations of infrastructural breakdown resulting from systemic overload coupled with maintenance neglect. This reconceptualization bridges public management scholarship with anthropological and socio-legal perspectives and outlines avenues for future research. For policymakers, our analysis emphasises that procurement requires sustained investment and attention, and appropriate use, rather than superficial regulatory adjustments that neglect its foundational capacity to structure governance outcomes.

The full paper is freely downloadable on SSRN: Davies, Nathan and Sanchez-Graells, Albert, Procurement as Infrastructure (June 16, 2025): https://ssrn.com/abstract=5297077.

Image credits: Elise Racine & The Bigger Picture / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Brexit & Procurement: Transitioning into the Void?

Dr Pedro Telles and I are putting the last touches to a new paper on Brexit and procurement (see here for an earlier analysis). In this working paper, we concentrate on the implications of the draft transition agreement of March 2018, as well as some of the aspects of a potential future EU-UK FTA. The abstract of the paper, which is available on SSRN and on which we sincerely invite any feedback, is as follows:

On 29 March 2017, the UK notified its intention of leaving the EU. This activated the two-year disconnection period foreseen in Article 50 TEU, thus resulting in a default Brexit at the end of March 2019. The firming up of a draft agreement on a transition period to run until 31 December 2020 can now provide a longer timescale for the Brexit disconnection, as well as some clarity on the process of disentanglement of the UK’s and EU’s legal systems. The draft transition agreement of 19 March 2018 provides explicit rules on public procurement bound to regulate ‘internal’ procurement trade between the UK and the EU for a period of over 15 months. However, the uncertainty concerning the future EU-UK relationship remains, and the draft agreement does not provide any indication on the likely legal architecture for future EU-UK trade, including through public procurement. The draft agreement has thus not suppressed the risk of a ‘cliff-edge’ disconnection post-Brexit, but rather solely deferred it. The transition is currently not into an alternative system of procurement regulation, but rather into the void. There have also been very limited developments concerning the UK’s and EU’s repositioning within the World Trade Organisation Government Procurement Agreement (WTO GPA), which creates additional legal uncertainty from the perspective of ‘external’ trade in procurement markets due to the absence of a ‘WTO rules’ default applicable to public procurement.

Against the backdrop of this legal uncertainty, this paper critically assesses the implications for public procurement of the March 2018 draft transition agreement. In particular, the paper identifies three shortcomings that would have required explicit regulation: first, the (maybe inadvertent) exclusion from the scope of coverage of the of the draft transition agreement of procurement carried out by the EU Institutions themselves; second, the continued enforcement of the rules on contract modification and termination; and third, the interaction between procurement and other rules. The paper also and flags up some of the areas for future EU-UK collaboration that require further attention. The paper then goes on to revisit the continued uncertainty concerning the EU’s and UK’s position within the WTO GPA. It concludes that it is in both the UK’s and the EU’s interest to reach a future EU-UK FTA that ensures continued collaboration and crystallises current compliance with EU rules, and to build on it to reach a jointly negotiated solution vis-a-vis the rest of WTO GPA parties.

The full details of the paper are as follows: P Telles & A Sanchez-Graells, 'Brexit and Public Procurement: Transitioning into the Void?' (April 20, 2018) SSRN working paper https://ssrn.com/abstract=3166056.