Local public procurement in Chile and Peru: institutional coherence and region

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Johannes Glückler
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 545737061

Public procurement is one of the most important instruments for governments to provide goods and services. In Latin America, the governments of Chile and Peru have pursued a continuous reform process for over a decade to limit corruption and abuse, and instead set the objectives, rules and procedures of public procurement in a way that promotes the socio-economic and sustainable development of the regions. This project examines two research questions: First, to what extent are stable orders of local procurement (institutions) aligned with changing formal procurement regulations? Second, what is the role of local public procurement in the development of Chilean and Peruvian regions? To answer these questions, the project aims to analyze local public procurement on a comparative regional basis, to examine its convergence or divergence from the respective national procurement rules, and to determine its role in regional development. To achieve these goals, the project adopts an inter-regional and inter-temporal comparative research design to observe both regional variation and dynamic adjustments in procurement practices. In addition, a mixed-methods design is needed to use qualitative and quantitative survey and evaluation methods to identify institutional structures and patterns of interaction in local contracting and to examine their coherence with legal norms and with the respective regional development. The four work packages comprise a policy analysis of procurement rules and the reform process to determine the normative rules in force (WP1), an econometric analysis of procurement statistics to assess regions with divergent local practice (WP2), qualitative case studies in three selected regions each of Chile and Peru to elucidate the specific interaction orders of divergent local procurement (WP3), and the linking of procurement statistics with socio-economic indicators and an econometric analysis of the institutional coherence of local procurement practices and regional development. Together, these work packages allow for a valid assessment of the relationship between, on the one hand, formal procurement rules and local procurement practices and, on the other hand, from local procurement practices to regional development in Chile and Peru.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants