Regulating complex contracting: a socio-legal study of decision-making under EU and UK law

The article evaluates interview data on decision-making under public procurement law using Halliday’s analytical model on compliance with administrative law. In this study, unlike other studies on administrative compliance, the decisions faced by public bodies are not routine; they relate to the award of complex, high-value contracts. Two contrasting decisions in the procurement process are discussed: the decision over the choice of procedure at the outset of the process, and the decision over the extent to which the public body should negotiate with the winning bidder towards the end of the process. The article considers the rationales behind decisions, and finds that, although public bodies are generally predisposed to comply, legal uncertainty means the relevance of commercial pressures and challenge risk impact heavily on approaches to compliance, even shaping understanding of what compliant behaviour actually is.