Buying a sustainable society: the case of public procurement in Sweden

Abstract

In this article, we conduct a governmentality analysis of Swedish public procurement in order to show how the notion of sustainability is constructed in this circumstance. We argue that the mainstream approach to sustainability policy in most countries lies within capitalist market rationalities, thus making it crucial to study how such rationalities shape and represent the problems of unsustainability and how these "problems" limit the possibilities for politics and policy in practice. Furthermore, public procurement is a central instrument through which these rationalities are realised and maintained. Thus, the purpose is to examine how problems of unsustainability are represented through public procurement policy and the effects they constitute for the politics of sustainability. To this end we mobilise the Foucauldian based "what's the problem represented to be" approach. As data, we use policy documents published with respect to public procurement in Sweden. Our findings show that the dominant problem representation constructs unsustainability as a market failure, limiting the possibilities for politics and policies of sustainability in several ways. This includes premising sustainability upon the continued expansion of capitalism; constituting the agents of change as apolitical actors; making sustainability a voluntary ambition for the procuring organisations; and constructing the legitimate claim to earth's resources and sinks as a matter of purchasing power, with important implications for environmental justice. However, our analysis also shows a tension in the material creating openings for a politicisation of the representations of sustainability.

Building a Sustainable Society: Construction, Public Procurement Policy and ‘Best Practice’ in the European Union

“…The choice to focus on the production and consumption perspectives stems from the circumstance that they represent two significantly different perspectives that, moreover, are common in policies for sustainable public procurement. One reason for this is that these perspectives are closely associated with different political economy approaches to sustainability [18,19,38]. Since public procurement is largely founded on economic theory, disputes over economic approaches are highly relevant to its practice.…”

“…Since public procurement is largely founded on economic theory, disputes over economic approaches are highly relevant to its practice. Another reason is that both perspectives have been highlighted as important by civil servants in at least one member state, Sweden [19], where both perspectives also surface in public procurement policies [18]. It needs to be clarified, however, that the analytical strategy of this paper is more empirically driven, in that we identified the problem representations implied in the identified guidelines and best practice exemplars (as detailed in the methodology section).…”

“…Although there is a long and ongoing discussion of different perspectives on sustainability and sustainable development in the reviewed literature, such discussions are uncommon in the research on sustainable public procurement and only occur in a few studies, notably [18,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64]. How the meaning of 'sustainability' is constructed through public procurement and the limits this entails are, therefore, an under-researched topic.…”

“…Particularly since market inspired reforms and organizing models, such as public procurement, dominate public administration and environmental policy in many democracies, 'weak' sustainable development perspectives have gained a prominent position [13,14]. Research also shows that such approaches can be associated with processes of de-politicization [7,[15][16][17][18].…”

“…Our argument is that public procurement can be considered a mainstream policy approach to sustainability and sustainable development, and that it lies firmly within capitalist market rationalities. This sets the scene for sustainable development through institutional policy arrangements based on market rationalities [18]. Hence, studying how such rationalities shape sustainable development policy, how this can be associated with the process of de-politicization and how it has constitutive effects for the practice of sustainable development is the main focus of the article.…”