Outsourcing, Public Procurement, and Corruption Risk

Outsourcing and public procurement belong to the more lasting legacies of the wave of New Public Management (NPM) reforms of the last decades. The ostensive purpose of such practices involves improved efficiency in public service delivery. Nevertheless, critics have pointed out that these simultaneously risk producing increased opportunities for corrupt activities, thus offsetting – or reversing – the potential gains they were designed to create. Using new and detailed data of corruption risk for public procurement tenders in Swedish municipalities throughout 2009-2015, we investigate the extent to which public procurement is marred by corruption in a relatively ‘clean’ context. Moreover, such comprehensive data provides an opportunity to extend beyond basic questions of whether public administration should engage in ‘more’ or ‘less’ procurement. Accordingly, we investigate the extent to which contextual factors, such as sectorial, meritocratic, and political considerations, to a varying degree influence the propensity for corrupt public procurement and outsourcing.