Buying Social Justice

Governments spend huge amounts of money buying goods and services from the private sector. How far should their spending power be affected by social policy? Arguments against the practice are often made by economists - on the grounds of inefficiency - and lawyers - on the grounds of free competition and international economic law. Buying Social Justice analyses how governments in developed and developing countries use their contracting power in order toadvance social equality and reduce discrimination, and argues that this approach is an entirely legitimate, and efficient means of achieving social justice.The book looks at the different experiences of a range of countries, including the UK, the USA and South Africa. It also examines the impact of international and regional regulation of the international economy, and questions the extent to which the issue of procurement policy should be regulated at the national, European or international levels. The role of EC and WTO law in mediating the tensions between the economic function of procurement and the social uses of procurement is discussed, andthe outcomes of controversies concerning the legitimacy of the integration of social values into procurement are analysed. Buying Social Justice argues that European and international legal regulation of procurement has become an important means of accentuating the positive and eliminating thenegative in both the social and economic uses of procurement.

Buying Social Justice is authoritative, well-written, well-argued and a major contribution to the literature on regulation, equality and human rights. It focuses much needed attention on a key area of government activity, whose potential use as an instrument of social policy has been chronically disregarded in the United Kingdom since the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s. It also makes a powerful case for the potential for procurement linkages to be used to advance social justice, while also making the wider claim that economic tools such as procurement can be used as instruments of social change without risking the commodification of equality as a value...It will inevitably become a major point of reference in this field throughout Europe and North America: no other text on this topic comes close to matching the range and authority of this book., ... highly original and immensely rich ... Drawing on international economic law, human rights doctrine, normative theory, and an astonishingly thorough analysis of relevant regional and domestic law, Professor McCrudden provides a rewarding treatment of the challenges associated with the transnational and comparative problems of regulating governmental contracting ... by undertaking such a comprehensive and analytically sophisticated study, Professor McCrudden is helping to forge what will likely become a major new field at the intersection of international law, social policy, and governance ... [he] has taken a major theoretical step in helping us understand the challenges and opportunities that will arise as international law grapples with the public problems posed by partially privatized nation states.

Christopher McCrudden is Professor of Human Rights Law and Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford