Mechanisms of Corruption in Public Procurement: A Typology by Stage of the Procurement Cycle

This study develops a stage-based typology of corruption mechanisms in public procurement and distinguishes mechanisms from observable risk indicators. The catalogue contains 30 mechanisms across ten stages of the procurement cycle and six functional clusters. Each mechanism is classified by its signal carrier: an external participant in the procedure, an audit body, or a person inside the contracting authority. The empirical analysis draws on a monitoring register covering 643 procurement procedures in the Russian Federation, including 531 completed episodes. The register makes it possible to trace external signals from the emergence of grounds for a complaint through filing and review on the merits. A quarter of completed episodes ended without a complaint after the applicable challenge deadline had expired. In 54 documented cases, the deadline for challenging the procurement documentation closed before the participant learned that the contested requirement had affected the outcome of its bid. Among 298 filed complaints with known outcomes, 35 were returned without review on the merits; of 263 complaints reviewed on the merits, 63 were upheld in full or in part. None of 22 applications to the second level of review with known outcomes was considered on the merits. The study uses these findings to examine how opportunities for detecting procurement misconduct are distributed across the procurement cycle and how the design of review and reporting channels affects whether external signals reach substantive assessment.