Advancing a new social science-based approach to the welfare state, this book puts forward a systematic understanding of public procurement that brings together perspectives from legal, public administration, sociological, and policy studies. Public Procurement and the Welfare State offers fresh insight into an important, complex, and interconnected activity of the welfare state and proposes a framework for exploring, understanding, and analysing this important area of state activity. Detailing the multi-faceted nature of public procurement processes that are essential for safeguarding vital services, constructing and maintaining infrastructure, and supplying the public sector, E.K. Sarter examines public procurement as a technical tool for safeguarding the availability of goods, works, and services, a social and political act, a policy tool, and a space for negotiation. This volume showcases the multi-faceted nature of public procurement and highlights the importance of decision-making processes and power relations that underly and for shape public spending decisions and processes, and thereby outcomes. Offering a timely and holistic framework for understanding public spending that can be put in the service of equality, this is essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, political science, welfare state studies, public and social policy, public administration, economic justice, social innovation, and feminist economics.
