Election Cycles in European Public Procurement

Abstract

This paper studies the existence of election cycles in public procurement in the European Union for the national level. We analyze different steps along the procurement process, namely the publication of the contract notice, the awarding of the contract, and the project completion. We point out how these steps should differ in their potential to address specific types of voters. We argue that the award provides politicians with a particularly appealing opportunity. It allows them to please the award-winning firms' stakeholders and the spending decision becomes binding and credible also from the perspective of forward-looking voters. We find robust evidence for electioneering in contract notices and awards prior to national parliamentary elections. The effect in contract awards is particularly strong for certain sub-categories like education and is more pronounced for visible projects.

Do Fiscal Rules Undermine Public Investments? A Review of Empirical Evidence

“…3 Of course, public investments are heterogeneous in their visibility to voters and public works on buildings or streets may be deemed more visible than other public investment categories (Chong et al, 2014) and politicians may initiate, for instance, many small projects before elections to gain competence and voter support (Havlik et al, 2021). Also "red-ribbon" cutting of completed projects may be salient to voters.…”