Multilateral Rules on Government Procurement

Abstract No multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement exists to address barriers to access to procurement markets. The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is a plurilateral agreement in the WTO system. If we expand from the formal WTO definition of multilateralism to a substantive definition, we can argue that the GPA is a multilateral agreement among states. Combining this with a realistic conception of the actual rules, applicable globally, we discover many norms with a multilateral character applying to government procurement. To understand multilateralism in actual operation, we must examine both a hard-law and a soft-law conception of multilateralism based on material sources of law and norms (not treaties) that states have produced. Hard-law multilateralism is mainly about trade liberalization in government procurement, usually as a trade treaty, while soft-law multilateralism concerns the substantive disciplines of procurement law, policy, and practice, pluralistic sets of norms applicable globally.