Public procurement and European Union integration: a systematic review

ABSTRACT The functional effects of public procurement on European Union (EU) integration have largely been neglected outside legal scholarship. However, government contracting is a crucial policy tool identified in social science disciplines and has considerably shaped European integration at large. This narrative review examines articles that have situated EU public procurement through numerous perspectives of integration with an emphasis on the theoretical frameworks adopted throughout its literature. Findings place public procurement as applied to EU integrative literature in numerous disciplines, and its theoretical breadth, rather than depth, points to advantages of public procurement’s scholarly utility in general.