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.

KEYWORDS:

• Governmentality
• WPR
• public administration
• Marketisation
• policy

Introduction

Sustainable development has been, and continues to be, one of the most prominent concepts in social science as well as policy making. However, the “weak” forms of sustainable development and sustainability, permeating mainstream politics and policy (Baker et al. 1997; Carter 2018; Hermele 2017; Martins 2016), is critiqued for depoliticising and excluding core issues of sustainability (Swyngedouw 2011), including environmental justice (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003; Di Chiro 2018), which is problematic from both a democratic and a sustainability perspective. Against this backdrop, we examine how the politics of sustainability becomes constituted through a central practice of new public management (NPM) that extends throughout public administration in many democracies, namely public procurement. Indeed, we argue that what can be considered 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.

The mainstream approach to sustainable development and sustainability is variously identified in terms of market environmentalism (Bell 2015; Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2012), ecological modernisation (Hult and Larsson 2016; Mol, Spaargaren, and Sonnenfeld 2014), and ecomodernism (Di Chiro 2018) in the literature. In conjunction with the broader marketisation of public administration, often captured under the umbrella concept of new public management (NPM) (Peters and Pierre 2018; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017), it sets the stage for an institutional arrangement dominated by market logics as the main tool for formulating and realising policies for sustainability. Indeed, even as scholars have started to theorise what they have come to call “post-NPM” (Reiter and Klenk 2019), there is no indication in the research literature of a clear shift in public administration practice, leaving such market rationalities firmly in place. Thus, while its labels vary, the mainstream approach emphasises the role of innovation and the capacity of markets to solve problems associated with sustainability. Moreover, it often rests on what is sometimes called a production perspective on sustainability, in which the focus and main concern is to reduce the environmental degradation produced within a specific territory, such as within a nation state (Hermele 2017; Hult and Larsson 2016).

In the existing literature on sustainable development and sustainability a number of limitations of such an approach have been identified (Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2012; Lockie 2014). An important part of this critique revolves around political aspects of how sustainability is produced as an object for political intervention. As such, scholars have pointed out how the mainstream approach largely neglects environmental degradation caused by increased consumption, the so-called “rebound effect” (Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014; Tukker et al. 2008), how it insufficiently addresses environmental injustices (Bell 2015), and how it overestimates the possibilities of commodifying “nature” (Lockie 2014). Thus, alternative approaches focused on reducing consumption, countering inequalities, and utilising alternatives to commodifying nature have been advocated (see Hornborg 2015a). These alternative approaches question the current economic order and its focus on perpetual economic growth, and are often associated with the consumption perspective on sustainability. This entails an emphasis on reducing citizens’ per capita ecological footprints resulting from consumption, including consumption of commodities produced in other countries and international transports (Hermele 2017; Hult and Larsson 2016).

Taken together, the differences between the mainstream and the alternative approaches highlight the political construction of “sustainability” as a phenomenon and as policy. Moreover, they highlight current discursive tensions associated with emphasising the production or the consumption side of sustainability, which in turn can be tied to notions of environmental justice. Therefore, in this paper, we examine the politics of sustainability by studying how the “problems” of unsustainability are currently constructed through an important and, from our research perspective, understudied part of public policy, namely public procurement. Our primary interest is in the effects constituted through these “problems”. We argue that the increasing marketisation of the public sector and the different ways that current expertise constitutes the problem of unsustainability is important precisely because governing is enacted and realised through such problematisations (Bacchi and Bonham 2014, 2016). Following the influential works of Carrol Bacchi (e.g. 2009) and more generally, the Foucauldian approach sometimes described as governmentality studies (Dean 2010; Foucault 2007, 2008; Walters 2012), we maintain that governing any domain of reality entails the construction of particular problems in need of steering and control. In short, from this perspective, political problems are not external to the practices of governing; they are produced through them. Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) approach to policy analysis, the purpose of this study is thus to analyse how problems of unsustainability are represented through public procurement and the effects they constitute for the politics of sustainability.

Specifically, the case presented here revolves around the newly formed Swedish public procurement policy which includes a new national strategy, a reformulated legislation, and the launch of a new national agency for public procurement. Public procurement, we argue, is one of the most central governmental technologies that sustains the marketisation of the public sector. It is designed at the European Union (EU) level, as well as in national contexts in Europe, as a way to construct markets for certain policy ends, not least sustainability. Among Swedish civil servants, public procurement has also been identified as a policy area that could be used to advance the consumption perspective on sustainability (Hult and Larsson 2016).

We, moreover, argue that our study of Swedish public procurement constitutes a paradigmatic case (Flyvbjerg 2006) in that it focuses on more general characteristics of “sustainability”, as these are produced through one of the key instruments of NPM, and as it illustrates the ongoing struggle between different representations of sustainability. Moreover, since public procurement has a similar design across the European Union (EU) (European Commission n.d.) – with a population of about 500 million and one of the largest per capita ecological footprints in the world (EEA 2019) – and because public procurement stands for a sizable proportion of the consumption in the EU, its importance for how “sustainability” is promoted is significant. Indeed, current estimates point to public procurement comprising some 19 percent of the combined GDP of the EU’s member states (European Commission 2017); this proportion is approximately the same for Sweden (see National Agency for Public Procurement 2018d). This also means that public procurement contributes significantly to the per capita ecological footprint in the EU (see Hult and Larsson 2016). In other words, the promotion of “sustainability” through public procurement is a very pronounced aspect of what we label governing through markets in the EU, as well as in Sweden. By illustrating how “sustainability” is currently constituted in Swedish public procurement, we thus offer insights that are theoretically important beyond that context, particularly in terms of the limits produced by governing through markets.

Following this introduction, the article is structured as follows. We first present a compact overview of what we identify as research concerning the political economy of sustainability. This section draws out the different positions mentioned above in more detail while also paying attention to the limited research that investigates public procurement as something political. Second, we articulate the theoretical and methodological perspective called “What’s the problem represented to be” (WPR), along with a description of our case and data selection rationale. Third, we present the empirical results in terms of how Swedish public procurement policy constitutes the “problems” of unsustainability. Finally, we provide a concluding discussion of our findings, in which we elaborate on the effects constituted through these problems and their implications for the politics of sustainability.

The political economy of sustainability

The scholarly literature on sustainability is vast and multifaceted. Simply put, to account for all of its variegated aspects here is not possible. However, for our purpose we find it important to outline a few different approaches to sustainability. By doing so, we wish to highlight how different ways of representing the problem of unsustainability is produced through scholarly work on what we broadly define as the political economy of sustainability. We briefly present this production as it manifests in the “market environmentalist” neoliberal mainstream as well as in a few alternative economic theories. In addition, we account for the limited literature that investigates the political aspects of public procurement in relation to sustainability.

In the market environmentalist mainstream (see Bell 2015; Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2012; Lockie 2014) – and associated approaches like ecological modernisation (Mol, Spaargaren, and Sonnenfeld 2014), and neoclassical economics (see Hornborg 2015a) – perpetual economic growth and ecological sustainability are both assumed possible and desirable to combine. This assumption mirrors notions of “weak” sustainable development, in which economic growth is described as a necessary condition for promoting the social and ecological dimensions of sustainability (Baker et al. 1997). It is argued that competitive markets and pricing mechanisms will spur innovation and efficiency, thereby providing the basis for new and adequate solutions to the environmental challenges. The core “problem” of unsustainability is represented to be market failure, i.e. that much of “nature” lacks a price. Hence, the current destruction of Earth’s biophysical system is attributed to negative market externalities resulting from an inadequate commodification of “nature”. Through the creation of proper market incentives, realised through the commodification and monetisation of nature, it is thus assumed that new innovations will overcome the current biophysical limits and enable continuous economic growth (Bell 2015; Hornborg 2015a; Lockie 2014).

Neoliberal market environmentalism has, however, been subject to critique. In the literature, a few topics are particularly contested. First, the value of several environmental “services” has been shown to be notoriously difficult to appraise and commodify, making one of the necessary conditions of market environmentalism questionable (Lockie 2014). Second, the monetisation of nature means that commodified ecological values become exchangeable with other monetised utilities (Hermele 2017). Finally, scholars argue that the environmental injustice produced through the unequal ecological exchange, both within and between countries, is largely neglected through market environmentalism. That is, it is either ignored, depicted as a separate problem, or as something that marketisation and economic growth will provide the means to reduce (Bell 2015; Hornborg 2015a). Since this injustice is often neglected, proponents of environmental justice have proposed that sustainable development – as the trajectory toward sustainability – should be redefined as “[…] the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, while living within the limits of supporting ecosystems” (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003, 2).

Taken together, researchers arguing for alternatives to the neoliberal mainstream come from many different traditions of political economy, such as the Marxist tradition (Foster and Burkett 2004, 2014), neo-physiocrat ecological economics (Costanza 1980; Hornborg 2015a), and non-reductionist ecological economics (Hornborg 2015a). These alternatives share a focus on counteracting the ecologically unequal exchange to promote environmental justice. Both the Marxist tradition and neo-physiocrat ecological economics imply some sort of planned economy, since economic value is either defined by the quantity of labour time (the Marxist tradition) or the quantity of embodied natural values, such as energy (Neo-Physiocrat ecological economics) (see Hornborg 2015a). However, the non-reductionist ecological economics tradition shares the liberal emphasis on consumer preferences as the mechanism defining economic value, yet still maintains a critical position. More precisely, non-reductionist ecological economics differs from the neoliberal mainstream in two important ways. First, the assumption of continuous economic growth is conceived as problematic since it accelerates entropy in the Earth system, which already is under unsustainable pressures. Second, contrary to market environmentalism, it makes environmental justice a key concern by emphasising that the overconsumption of some populations comes at the expense of the development chances of others. Taken together, these alternative perspectives also stress how there is a difference between measuring ecological footprints from the point of consumption rather than from a production viewpoint. From the former perspective, the focus is on reaching sustainable per capita consumption levels (Hornborg 2015a).

While the literature on the political economy of sustainability is broad, involving many topics, positions, and perspectives, we argue that it is significantly underdeveloped in relation to public procurement. Indeed, more broadly, public procurement seems to be largely overlooked by scholars interested in the effects of power and politics (Furusten 2015). Instead, public procurement is often treated more generally as a part of the marketisation and ongoing reforms of public administration (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017) or very specifically as a matter of technical and judicial concerns (Furusten 2015). This general picture seems to be withstanding in relation to sustainability and public procurement as well. Thus, much of the existing research in this regard is focused on more practical aspects of how to use public procurement as a tool to achieve sustainable outcomes (e.g. Tukker et al. 2008) or how it has been used in various circumstances (e.g. McCrudden 2004). Topics and themes such as life cycle costs and the built environment are fairly common (e.g. Sporrong and Bröchner 2009; Tarantini, Loprieno, and Porta 2011) as is the linkage between digitalisation, public procurement, and sustainability (e.g. Brammer and Walker 2011). As for more critical takes in terms of power and effects of governing, scholars have been particularly interested in investigating how public procurement is used to foster a more sustainable food production as well as consumption (Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014; Galli et al. 2014; Kleine and Brightwell 2015). Taken together, however, we argue that this research stands to benefit from takes that more explicitly investigate public procurement as a political tool designed to realise particular goals and ambitions, thereby constituting specific conditions for the politics of sustainability, rather than as a neutral policy instrument that may or may not help bring about change.

Analysing public procurement policy: about the case, methodology and data

In this article, we conduct a policy analysis based on the “What’s the problem represented to be?” approach (WPR), which is a form of governmentality approach (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016; Dean 2010; Walters 2012). WPR is used to study problem representations implicitly produced through policy proposals. Based on a Foucauldian rationale, such a problem representation produces a specific version of a phenomena (Bacchi 2009, 2012b), for instance a particular version of “sustainability” in public procurement. Accordingly, problem representations signify “[…] the thinking that comes to constitute our condition” (Bacchi 2012b, 1). In this sense, problem representations are political. Each constitutes both possibilities and limitations for the becoming of phenomena (Bacchi 2009). The approach thus offers a way to pinpoint the construction of things. Moreover, it provides tools for problematising the effects constituted through these constructions (Bacchi 2009).

The WPR approach is designed to identify and problematise problem representations implicitly articulated through policies or policy proposals, where policy is understood broadly as prescriptive texts or guides to practice. As such, they are used as the point of departure for teasing out the current construction of things. That is, the researcher starts with identifying prescriptive texts. The problem representations implied through these are then conceptualised (Bacchi 2009, 2012b). Once conceptualised, the constitutive effects constructed through the problem representations are problematised. Three types of effects are conceptualised in the WPR approach. The first is the specific ways in which a problem representation constructs subject and object positions, which we term “positioning effects” (see Olsson 2018). These effects are studied by analysing how a phenomenon, such as sustainability, becomes governable through the laws, regulations or measuring techniques that form part of a particular problematisation of the phenomenon. Specifically, the analytical focus is on how certain concepts, categorisations or binaries construct subject and object positions as part of rendering any given problem representation governable (Bacchi 2009; Olsson 2018).

The second type of effect is so-called “discursive effects”, which are the effects of silencing other problematisations of a phenomenon, such as (un)sustainability, resulting from any given problem representation. These effects can be studied by examining how a phenomenon like (un)sustainability is problematised in a policy compared to alternative problem representations, such as the alternative problematisations made during the formation of a policy or, as in the case of this study, by alternative problematisations made in the research literature. Hence, the study of discursive effects is enabled by visualising alternative problematisations which, through the “blind spots” of a problem representation, becomes undetectable and unproblematised (see Bacchi 2009; Olsson 2018).

The third type of effect is the so-called lived effects. These are the real-life effects that a specific problematisation is likely to have if acted upon (Bacchi 2009). The lived effects are drawn from the analysis of positioning and discursive effects. A particular problem representation of unsustainability will, for example, construct specific priorities between environmental, social and economic values. If implemented, these priorities are likely to have certain real-life impacts. Although the lived effects are speculative in character (Bacchi 2009), their basis in the analysis of positioning and discursive effects nevertheless enables tentative prognoses of the type: “if problematisation X is implemented, it is not implausible that the lived effects a and b will follow”.

To support the problematisation of problem representations, the WPR approach provides six analytical questions (Bacchi 2009). We use three of these questions to guide our analysis, namely: “What’s the ‘problem’ […] represented to be […]? […] What […] assumptions underpin this representation of the ‘problem’? […] What effects are produced by this representation of the ‘problem’?” (Bacchi 2012a, 21).

Instead of conducting a genealogy of problem representations, as suggested by the WPR approach, we use competing problematisations made in the research on political economy (outlined in the previous section) as the basis for problematising the problem representation(s) emerging from the guides to practice forming part of the Swedish public procurement system. This methodological choice is motivated by our focus on the effects of the problem representations of the Swedish public procurement system, not their formation and change over time. Although the focus on historical formation and contingency, enabled through genealogical analysis, is often central to governmentality studies, we argue that it is not necessary for the study of effects of problem representations. The effects of problem representations of a phenomena such as “sustainability” can also be problematised through comparisons with problem representations made in competing schools of research (see Olsson 2018).

In terms of material and the actual case presented here, we have chosen to follow a rather straight forward design. In Sweden, the institutional structure surrounding public procurement has recently been reconstructed with the explicit purpose of making it a more versatile instrument of governing. One of the outspoken ambitions in this regard is to use public procurement to promote sustainability. To this end, the legislation has been updated quite significantly to make more room for tenderers to select contractors that show the best solutions in terms of sustainability. In addition, a new national strategy for public procurement has been deployed in which the new legislation is explicitly connected to a set of goals, including social and environmental sustainability. Finally, a new national public procurement agency has been instated to help develop and monitor public procurement, in accordance with the new strategy, throughout the public sector (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016). Therefore, we have collected and analysed all of the policy documents on public procurement that adhere to this new structure and has a focus on sustainability issues (see Appendix 1). This means that, in addition to the new legislation and the new strategy, we have included a number of documents produced by the new agency with respect to public procurement and sustainability. In total, we argue that this material is well suited for a WPR analysis with the purpose we have here.

As indicated in the introduction, we view our case as paradigmatic (Flyvbjerg 2006; Pavlich 2010). Paradigmatic cases are such “cases that highlight more general characteristics of the societies in question” (Flyvbjerg 2006, 232) or “carefully selected examples extracted from phenomena. [… that] can reveal key elements of a phenomenon under consideration” (Pavlich 2010, 2). For us, this means that we consider the Swedish case of public procurement for sustainability as an exemplar, or prototype, that showcase how market logics guide and steer public procurement for sustainability in the EU. Naturally, the empirical embodiments of these market logics will differ across the member states. However, they are likely to have a family resemblance (Goertz 2006) in that they reflect shared assumptions and problematisations. Moreover, in a weaker sense, we argue that the case we present here is an exemplar of the marketisation of the public sector more generally in that it provides insights into the creation and governing of markets by the public sector. Thus, while empirical generalisations of what we find here is not possible, we argue that the results of this study can be used to provide theoretical insights about problem representations and their effects beyond the particular context examined.

The “problems” of unsustainability constructed through public procurement

In this part of the article, we provide illustrative examples of how the problems of unsustainability are represented through different prescriptions or guides to practice that form part of the Swedish public procurement system. We have identified two overarching problem representations in the material, one dominant and one peripheral. The first embodies the market environmentalist approach and the production perspective on sustainability. We label it “unsustainability as market failure”. The other, much less pronounced problem representation, is termed “unsustainability as overconsumption”. This problem representation enacts the consumption perspective on sustainability and, accordingly, mirrors aspects of alternative approaches to sustainability that are in tension with the mainstream approach. Since the prescriptions producing the latter problem representation are few, this section is much shorter than the section illustrating unsustainability as market failure.

Unsustainability as market failure

Unsustainability as market failure is produced through an emphasis and focus, throughout the prescriptive texts and tools, on creating a procurement market that internalises environmental and social externalities. Indeed, an explicit articulation of this problematisation is made by the Swedish National Agency for Public Procurement:

Environmental externalities are a market failure. […] Externalities can relate to environmental as well as social, cultural, and health related aspects. (National Agency for Public Procurement n.d.a, 5, our translation)

There are several prescriptions that form part of the arrangement that constructs this problem representation. Put briefly, this arrangement primarily consists of four core prescriptions: (1) the encouragement to include commodified environmental and social values in procurements, (2) the imperative to create a competitive, preferably international, procurement market on which these environmental and social commodities can be included, (3) the promotion of a strategic leadership facilitating good organisational conditions for public procurement, and (4) the design of institutions supportive of the market logic of public procurement. In what follows, this arrangement and the way in which it constructs the “problem” of unsustainability as market failure is outlined. The assumptions underpinning the problem representation and the positioning and discursive effects it constitutes are also elaborated.

We identify the first core prescription as the encouragement to include commodified social and environmental values in public procurements. It is articulated in texts and tools that highlight the opportunities public procurers have to use sustainability criteria as means to include externalities in procurements (e.g. Swedish Competition Authority 2014; Swedish Public Procurement Act 2016:1145 Chapter 4, Section 3). Concerning environmental sustainability, it is for instance stated:

Swedish legislation […] offers major opportunities for setting criteria for environmental consideration, which now more than before can be taken into account at all stages of the public procurement process. (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016, 23, italics added by us)

Hence, a number of sustainability criteria can be incorporated in the procurement process. Depending on the procuring organisation’s level of ambition, it is possible to award weight to different sustainability criteria during a public procurement. Specifically, public authorities can choose to use different tools and instruments to include commodified social and environmental values, which then are balanced against other utilities during a procurement (e.g. Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016; Swedish Public Procurement Act 2016:1145, Chapter 16, Section 1–6).

One tool intended for weighting and balancing commodified environmental and social values against other utilities is, for instance, life cycle cost (LCC) calculations. Such calculations are described as central for incorporating environmental and social externalities as award criteria when evaluating tenders. To enable this, these values need to be monetised:

Life cycle costs may include the costs for external environmental effects connected to the subject-matter to be purchased, if the environmental effects can be determined in a monetary sum that can be verified. (Swedish Public Procurement Act 2016:1145, Chapter 16, Section 4)

Through LCC calculations, a procuring organisation is thus allowed to include externalities if they can be objectively measured and monetised. To enable this monetisation, the public procurement agency provides templets that include standardised data on environmental externalities (see National Agency for Public Procurement 2018a).

The encouragement to include LCC’s reflects several assumptions. A first assumption is that the values of environmental and social externalities can be adequately measured in monetary terms – where the onus is on those doing the measuring to prove these values. A second assumption is that the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development are exchangeable, as in weak notions of sustainability (see Hermele 2017; Martins 2016), since all values are monetised. This means that, for instance, relatively high costs of environmental degradation could be accepted if other costs, such as the purchasing price, are low. A third assumption is that procuring organisations have the will and capacity to prioritise the work associated with carrying out LCC’s and integrate them in public procurements, since it is optional.

The optional status of sustainability criteria becomes even more pronounced by another tool, the so-called “Criteria Wizard”. This tool consists of a database offering a wide range of standardised social and environmental sustainability criteria that can be added to most procurements. A procuring organisation can choose between three criteria levels when preparing a procurement – the basic level (which is somewhat more ambitious than the legal obligations), the advanced level, and the spearhead level (see National Agency for Public Procurement 2017c; National Agency for Public Procurement n.d.b). Although this possibility to choose the level of ambition opens up some space for politics, the optional status of environmental and social sustainability criteria reflects their subordinated position in relation to market-related objectives, such as competitiveness.

This brings us to the second core prescription of the arrangement constructing unsustainability as market failure. The creation of a competitive – preferably international – procurement market, on which the environmental and social commodities can be included, is a top priority (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016). While the legislation on public procurement states that the procuring organisations should consider social and environmental externalities (Swedish Public Procurement Act 2016:1145 Chapter 4, Section 3), it emphasises that competition must not be limited. For instance, when a procurement is designed, “[…] it shall not be made […] with the intention of limiting competition so that certain suppliers are unduly favoured or disadvantaged” (Ibid, Chapter 4, Section 2).

As mentioned, social and environmental values can be included on the public procurement market. Reflecting the top priority of promoting market competition, it is stated that these values should be included by using standardised and internationally recognised sustainability criteria to the largest extent possible, including those provided by the Criteria Wizard (National Agency for Public Procurement 2018c). For instance, to reach the national public procurement strategy’s objective of a multiplicity of suppliers and well-functioning competition, the strategy stresses that it is important “[…] to enable foreign suppliers to take part in public procurements, [and to support this] reference should be made to international standards or labels whenever possible” (Ibid, p. 17). This is based on the assumption that a competitive procurement market that includes widely recognised sustainability criteria will produce sustainable outcomes by creating incentives for sustainable innovations to emerge, especially innovations that generate synergies between the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development (National Agency for Public Procurement 2017d, 2017g, 2018b; Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016). Public procurement as a means to create incentives for innovations that promote both development and sustainability is, for example, stressed in the national public procurement strategy:

Great potential exists in using public procurement as a tool for promoting development and innovation. […] The public sector can also promote innovation at supplier level by requesting, in public procurements, functions rather than ready solutions. Furthermore, the public sector can, in its capacity as active purchaser and first customer, drive the market to develop solutions to important social challenges. By demanding so-called “transformative” solutions to a greater extent, contracting authorities can, for example, help sustainability goals to be achieved. (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016, 20f)

Market competition is thus presumed to promote innovations and synergies furthering several objectives, including those of environmental and social sustainability. This constitutes a competitive market as the condition for reaching sustainability. Hence, sustainability is subordinated to market mechanisms. It is worth stressing that this problematisation thereby restricts the pursuit of sustainability to the largely apolitical “win-win” logic of the market. The space for politics becomes limited to the choice of ambition level regarding the inclusion of social and environmental values as commodities on the procurement market. Accordingly, the problem representation silences several value conflicts and power asymmetries, such as between competing notions of justice (e.g. Fraser 1997; Rawls 1971; Sen 2009; Young 1990) as well as between the capitalist logic of growing competitive markets and increased consumption on the one hand and the increasing pressures this consumption puts on Earth’s biophysical capacity on the other (Hornborg 2015a; Raworth 2017). The imperative to use internationally recognised criteria to promote sustainability through market mechanisms, moreover, backgrounds the many value-conflicts and trade-offs associated with standardised criteria (see Boström and Klintman 2013).

The third core prescription of the arrangement constructing unsustainability as market failure is the stress on promoting a strategic leadership facilitating good organisational conditions for public procurement. It concerns both national leadership functions and the leadership within procuring organisations (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016). One of the national leadership functions is ascribed to the National Public Procurement Strategy as such:

A national strategy is needed to promote innovations and be a catalyst for new ideas in the public sector and the business community. It is needed to achieve the Government’s aim of establishing public procurement as a strategic tool for efficient organisations and a means of achieving the national environmental, social sustainability and administration policy objectives. (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016, 6)

Another national leadership function is attributed to the National Agency for Public Procurement, which was founded with the aim of raising the profile of public procurement and providing good organisational conditions for “as effective support as possible” (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016, 7).

At the level of the procuring organisations, the call for a strategic leadership is expressed through the emphasis that “[d]ecision-makers must be aware that strategic use of public procurement is a prerequisite that will enable the public authority or entity [i.e. the procuring organisation] to achieve its organisational objectives and do good business” (Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016, 12). Regarding sustainability, a concrete example of this relates to LCC calculations. A strategic leadership is described as key to enable a more holistic and efficient use of LCC’s during public procurements (National Agency for Public Procurement 2017b).

This aspect of the problem representation thus constructs an apolitical, market-oriented leadership. That is, the focus is on facilitating good conditions for a competitive market and the potential of incorporating sustainability criteria on this market. Accordingly, leaders as political subjects are excluded from this problematisation, along with political issues such as the meaning of sustainability, sustainable development and justice.

The fourth core prescription of the arrangement constructing unsustainability as market failure concern the design of the institutional arrangement around public procurement. This includes calls for clear roles and responsibilities as well as sufficient resources. Regarding the use of LCC’s, it is for example stated: “In order for LCC’s to contribute to good procurements, the procuring unit needs a clear mandate to work with LCC’s as well as resources that are set aside for this” (National Agency for Public Procurement 2017e, our translation). It is, moreover, stressed that procuring organisations should have clear guidelines (e.g. on business ethics), roles, and responsibilities to improve the conditions of working with LCC’s during procurement processes. It is also underscored that sustainability criteria should be considered early in the procurement process and that procuring organisations should have a coordinating unit responsible for conducting LCC calculations (National Agency for Public Procurement 2017a, 2017f; Swedish Ministry of Finance 2016). Furthermore, it is suggested that the work with LCC’s should start during the preparatory phase in the procurement process, enabling it to be aligned with the strategic goals and priorities of the procuring organisation (National Agency for Public Procurement 2017e).

Here, too, sustainability primarily becomes positioned as a technical issue: to improve the organisational design for better public procurements that, based on market mechanisms, presumably promote sustainability. Consequently, it largely silences political issues. As with the use of criteria in general, the political issues become limited to how ambitious the inclusion of environmental and social sustainability criteria should be.

In light of this analysis, the assumptions of unsustainability as market failure, and the positioning and discursive effects it constitutes, can be summed up as follows. To start with, the problem representation rests on the assumptions that sustainability will be produced through market mechanisms if: (1) environmental and social externalities are commodified, (2) competitive procurement markets are established, and (3) the procuring organisations choose and have the capacity to prioritise the inclusion of environmental and social commodities on the procurement market. These three core assumptions are, in turn, based on a few additional assumptions, notably: (a) it is possible to produce standardised measures of, and adequately commodify, environmental and social values, (b) it is desirable to describe environmental and social sustainability as instrumental values, which acquire their value from the utilities they are ascribed at the procurement market, and (c) market incentives will spur self-interested actors to produce sustainable innovations (win-win scenarios) that promote sustainability, based on a production perspective on sustainability.

We have continuously pointed out how this positions social and environmental sustainability as conditioned on, and subordinated to, the logic of market mechanisms. Moreover, we have shown how this renders sustainability as largely apolitical, devoid of any value conflicts and power asymmetries. We will expand this discussion in the concluding section of the article, however, before that we turn to another problem representation, which emerges at the margins of the Swedish public procurement system. This, we argue, carries potential to open up possibilities for politics and, thus, value-rational struggles over the meaning and implications of sustainable development and sustainability.

Unsustainability as overconsumption

Unsustainability as overconsumption is articulated through a few prescriptive texts forming part of the public procurement system. These suggest ways of reducing the consumption of commodities and materials through organisational changes and the use of tools such as needs assessment and environmental expenditure analysis:

Organisational changes or deepened needs assessments can also contribute to reducing the environmental impacts from purchases, and this can be illuminated with the help of environmental expenditure analysis. Reducing the turnover of commodities and material will decrease raw material usage and exploitation of nature. (National Agency for Public Procurement 2020b our translation)

Environmental expenditure analysis, and related to it, life cycle analysis (LCA) are described as particularly important tools enabling reduced consumption (National Agency for Public Procurement 2020a). For instance, based on an analysis with such tools, it is stated that computers, furniture, and cell phones should preferably be used for longer periods of time, since their largest environmental impact is made during their production (National Agency for Public Procurement 2020b). Furthermore, based on an environmental expenditure analysis, the public procurement agency has estimated the aggregated environmental impact, within and beyond Sweden, from the total public procurements of the Swedish public sector, as well as the impacts of different types of public purchases (National Agency for Public Procurement 2020a). The public procurement agency also states that, “[i]n general, the efforts should first and foremost be to streamline or reduce the use of energy and fuel [italics added by us]” (National Agency for Public Procurement 2019 our translation).

This problem representation reflects the consumption perspective on sustainability, in contrast to the production perspective. Although unsustainability as market failure is the dominant problem representation, unsustainability as overconsumption of commodities and materials thus forms a parallel, alternative problem representation. This problem representation echoes aspects of the alternative political economy approaches, which stress the need to reduce the ecological footprint by lowering consumption, instead of conditioning sustainability on competitiveness and innovations in production as in unsustainability as market failure. Even though ecologically unequal exchange is not problematised in the Swedish public procurement system, it presents an alternative to unsustainability as market failure that is in tension with the latter problem representation’s assumptions of consumerism and the primacy of economic growth. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that this problem representation also reflects the assumption that consumption can be decreased through technical means. Thus, it constructs apolitical, technical subjects as the actors that should promote sustainability; political subjects are not present in this problem representation. Moreover, reduced consumption levels are constructed as voluntary, not an obligation. Nonetheless, tools such as environmental expenditure analysis and LCA arguably have potential to form part of alternative arrangements, through which unsustainability becomes problematised as something altogether different than unsustainability as market failure – arrangements problematising unsustainability in ways that open up more space for politics.

Concluding discussion

In this article, we have shown how the newly reformed system for public procurement in Sweden constructs (un)sustainability as a problem of governing. By analysing policy documents and legal texts, we have illustrated how a dominating representation of the problem equates unsustainability with market failures. In other words, if these markets could only be made better and more efficient, sustainability would be within reach through new innovations. This problem representation is symptomatic of the market-based approach to sustainability identified in Sweden (Bell 2015; Hult and Larsson 2016), between member states of the EU (Lockie 2013), within other European countries such as the U.K. (Bell 2015) and Germany (Albrecht 2012), and in countries beyond Europe, such as the U.S.A. (Bell 2015; Lockie 2013). Since the Swedish system of public procurement is part of a larger initiative in the EU, and in this sense paradigmatic with its emphasis on market solutions for political problems such as sustainability, we argue that the analysis we have conducted here can serve as a prototype for approaching other cases beyond what we empirically address. Specifically, our study could also serve as a point of departure for identifying and problematising the effects of problematisations in policies with a family resemblance to Swedish public procurement policy, especially those of public procurement policies in other EU member states, since these policies are subordinated to the same legal framework (European Commission n.d.). It should, however, be stressed that our study is delimited to problematisations constructed through policies. We do not examine problematisations emerging from the implementation and street-level practice of public procurement, which we plan to addressed in future studies.

In the following we expand further on the implications of the positioning effects and discursive effects of the problem representations of the Swedish public procurement system, also including an elaboration of lived effects (Bacchi 2009) and implications of a tension that, we argue, is important for the further development of unsustainability as a policy problem. Thus, what follows here is a concluding discussion, in which parts of the analysis are expanded and put in relation to relevant existing research.

First, and most generally, the dominating ways of representing the problems of unsustainability in our material have the effects that sustainability largely becomes premised upon the continued development of capitalism. As illustrated, an underlying assumption of unsustainability as market failure, as produced through the Swedish public procurement system, is that competitive procurement markets will generate innovations enhancing economic growth while also promoting environmental and social sustainability. Recall that the promotion of growth-related objectives, such as enhanced competitiveness, is a legal obligation, while social and ecological sustainability are primarily optional. Moreover, even if innovative synergies would be materialised through innovations, the focus on making production and products sustainable in this way of representing the problem backgrounds the most convincing measures for reducing consumption. The so-called “rebound effect” (Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014; Tukker et al. 2008) – an effect also apparent in “frontrunners” like Sweden (Hult and Larsson 2016) – is symptomatic of this failure to recognise and seriously address the consumption perspective of sustainability. Indeed, this discussion also relates to a broader scholarly debate on whether capitalism can be made sustainable or if a different system is required (see Bell 2015). In short then, although unsustainability as overconsumption, as it is articulated through the Swedish public procurement system, partially touches on this issue, the measures to reduce consumption are marginalised, not the least since they are constructed as optional. Reducing the ecological footprint through public procurement is for instance not a legal obligation.

Second, unsustainability as market failure, as produced through Swedish public procurement, constitutes sustainability as premised upon the procuring organisations’ ambition and capability to construct public procurement markets that internalise environmental and social externalities. This is, first of all, an expression of a view in which institutions and actors are basically rational in the sense that they operate with preference curves and self-interest as their basic function. While this is a common perspective, it should be emphasised that it is an ontological and political assumption rather than a neutral point of departure (Raworth 2017). Also, in more practical terms, no matter how rational the organisation, there is a risk that factors such as a lack of time and conflicts with the obligations of public procurement will lead many procuring organisations to either neglect or lower their sustainability ambitions, with repercussions in the lives of both humans and non-humans, even though sustainability enthusiasts in these organisations may try their hardest not to.

Third, the problem representation constitutes the social actors and the arena for promoting sustainability as largely apolitical, since both the actors and the arena become governed by an instrumental market rationality, not value rationality (Flyvbjerg 2001, 2004). The small space left for politics is limited to making decisions on how many environmental and social externalities to include on the market. Central political issues concerning the meaning and implications of sustainable development and sustainability (Carter 2018) become silenced through this problem representation. This includes topics such as conflicting ideas of justice (Bulkeley, Edwards, and Fuller 2014; Read 2011; Schlosberg 2012), competing conceptions of the human-environment relation (e.g. Ball 2006; Carter 2018; Eckersley 1992) as well as different understandings of the relation between growth and sustainability (Bell 2015; Hornborg 2015a; Raworth 2017).

Fourth, several researchers argue that the primacy of economic growth in already affluent countries, and among rich strata of the human population across the globe, counteracts the development chances of future generations and currently living poor populations (Bell 2015; Fauré et al. 2016; Hornborg 2015a, 2015b; Hult and Larsson 2016; Read 2011). The assumption that sustained economic growth is possible for all, especially the already affluent, is thus contested. This challenge is not problematised through unsustainability as market failure. Rather, it is actively backgrounded by instead promoting the far reaching and almost emancipatory effects of innovation. Through this problem representation, the large per capita footprint of the Swedish population, which to a significant degree is produced through Swedish public procurement, is not problematised. That is, unsustainability as market failure does not encompass this justice aspect, since the “legitimate right” to Earth’s resources and sinks becomes determined by purchasing power which, while common, still is a quite particular way of thinking about justice. Consequently, it is not implausible that a continuation of the unsustainable per capita footprint from Swedish consumption will be a lived effect of unsustainability as market failure, as long as the there is money to pay for it. Hence, even if all environmental and social externalities would be internalised as costs on the procurement market, producing “optimal” compensation through the market, it would not automatically bring about environmental justice (see Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003, Anguelovski et al. 2016; Di Chiro 2018). As long as the rich populations’ ecological footprint is larger than the sustainable level, it entails that other populations, both currently living poor and future generations, will have to be content with a smaller share of Earth's biophysical resources and sinks.

Summing up, we would also like to address what we take to be an important feature of the material that we have analysed, namely the tension between the problem representation of market failure and the problem representation of overconsumption, resembling findings in Hult and Larsson (2016). To us, this serves to highlight the profoundly political character of sustainable development and sustainability. Even though the dominant representation often emerges as naturalised and “just the way to do things”, there are openings and competing articulations present. Considering the economic weight of public procurement, the policy articulations emphasising its key role for promoting sustainability, and the effects constituted through its construction of unsustainability as market failure, we view these cracks and opportunities as a welcome feature, as we see a need to further politicise the Swedish public procurement system and open it up to alternative ways to pursue sustainability. Such politicisation could find further inspiration in studies critical to the market-based approach dominating Swedish public procurement, including research arguing for the promotion of a consumption perspective in public procurement (Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014; Kleine and Brightwell 2015) and in public administration and policy more generally (Brunori and Di Iacovo 2014; Fauré et al. 2016; Hult and Larsson 2016), as well as political economy research focused on ecologically unequal exchange (Hornborg 2015a; Jorgenson and Givens 2013) and alternative economic theories and models (Hornborg 2015a; Raworth 2017).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och Beredskap [Societal Resilience in Sweden, grant number 217-34]; The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) [ProcSIBE, grant number 2013-1837].