Transnationalization of Public Contracts

Public contracts were traditionally conceived as instruments of domestic public law and used within markets confined to the territory of the state party to the contract. Globalization, however, subjects public contracting to an increasing number of processes that take place at a transnational level and that have transformative impact on the very concept of public contracts law. Globalization, in other words, has the effect of reshaping public contracts into instruments of governance within a transnational legal space. In adopting a transnational concept of law, the present book maps the different processes, actors and instruments involved in the transnationalization of public contracts law. It covers the impact of different areas of binding international law on public contracts as well as less obvious and more indirect processes in which domestic public contracting becomes influenced by the activities of private and public entities, such as multinational enterprises or international organizations, through lending and financing, or by developing model laws or model agreements for certain areas of public contracting.