https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9837-4753
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IMPACT
In environments with incentives for opportunism, effective tools to limit corruption in public procurement are necessary. The authors show that monitoring and law enforcement tools are more important than the strict regulation. A simple transfer of regulation from developed countries to transitional economies does not deliver the desired procurement performance without proper enforcement. Regulators need to consider the scale of opportunism among procurement participants—if it is high, it is necessary to focus on monitoring and law enforcement capabilities.
ABSTRACT
This article studies the practice of predetermined choice of suppliers in public procurement in post-socialist countries. The authors conducted an online survey of suppliers in Russia and Slovakia in 2020, revealing that, despite different models of procurement regulation, this practice was being widely used in both countries. Some were justifying predetermined choice to guarantee delivery and quality. Surprisingly, Russian suppliers assessed the efficiency of public procurement higher than Slovak suppliers, which can be explained by more efficient monitoring and conflict resolution via the courts. The authors conclude that Slovakia possesses an insufficient level of monitoring and law enforcement in public procurement. This article contributes to the literature on procurement efficiency by emphasizing the crucial role of monitoring and law enforcement rather than regulation.
Acknowledgements
Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank Jim Bowden for assistance in technical editing and proofreading of the manuscript. They are also grateful to the suppliers for participating in the survey.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).