Regulating public procurement in Brazil, India, and China: Toward the regulatory‐developmental state

Abstract

Since the 1990s, emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China have adopted transparency-enhancing public procurement regulations in line with international norms. Yet they have hesitated to join the World Trade Organization's legally binding Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Based on the Special Issue framework, this article scrutinizes the underlying domestic and international determinants, and how they influence emerging countries' positions in two overlapping international procurement regimes. In particular, reform-oriented state actors, societal pressure, and lesson-drawing from international templates have induced a strengthening of domestic procurement institutions and turned emerging countries into "promoters" of the international transparency regime. Conversely, the rising powers have remained, to varying degrees, reluctant "spoilers" of the GPA-based market access regime in order to keep policy space and use procurement for domestic development objectives. The article suggests that this regulatory-developmental layering of rule-based governance and interventionist ambitions characterizes the variegated regulatory state in emerging countries.

The regulatory state under pressure

“…The counterpoint to this (and perhaps indicative of the profoundly changing nature of geopolitics) is the dilution of expertise and independence at the same time by more populist tendencies such as that demonstrated by US President Trump (2017-2021. Undermining the contrast made in our 2013 book between democratic and authoritarian regime settings, elements of both increasingly appear together.…”

“…Since then, the inevitability of political dynamics in the conceptualization of the regulatory state has arguably become more widely accepted. In addition, the greatly increased penetration of transnational dynamics into patterns of regulatory governance -from competition (L. Wang 2021) and public procurement (Križić 2021) to certification standards in food (Canfield 2022), forestry (Meidinger 2006) internet governance (Cohen 2020), and accounting and product and labour standards (Buthe and Mattli 2011) -has intensified the interdependence of North and South, entangling their institutional linkages in a range of ways this chapter will highlight. Yet the six factors retain their relevance, and in the discussion that follows, I adapt them in three steps: the first skews towards the 'deals' end of the spectrum, the second towards rules, and the third raises more fundamental challenges to the spectrum as a whole.…”

Varieties of consumer credit data regimes: A regulatory governance approach

“…Though we are committed to cross-national comparisons in general, comparative capitalism in particular (see also Apaydin, 2018;Križi c, 2019;Mathieu & Rangoni, 2019), we would also like to know which subregime or sector is more or less likely to accord us a better understanding of national varieties of regulation. Our empirical findings demonstrate that variance at the national level can and should be complemented with analysis of variations among subregimes and diverse regulatory strategies.…”

Compliance, defiance, and the dependency trap: International Monetary Fund program interruptions and their impact on capital markets

“…International organizations powerfully shape regulatory governance within nation‐states by diffusing ideas and practices about appropriate policy (Barnett & Finnemore 2004; Simmons et al . 2008; Shaffer 2015; Križić 2019). This is not always a happy story leading to improvements in governance: problems can emerge when international organizations fail to account for the diversity of regulatory environments in countries around the world.…”

“…This is not always a happy story leading to improvements in governance: problems can emerge when international organizations fail to account for the diversity of regulatory environments in countries around the world. Those recognizing this issue typically point to a variegated regulatory state on a spectrum between rule‐based high‐income countries and deal‐based low‐ and middle‐income countries that face increased vulnerability to global forces (Carruthers & Halliday 2006; Dubash & Morgan 2012; Jayasuriya 2013; Križić 2019). Simply put, things are done differently outside the Global North, and necessarily so, reflecting widely diverging development paths and political economic structures.…”