Public Contracting and Small Businesses: between competition and administrative efficiency
Public contracting. Small businesses. Administrative efficiency. Free competition.
The favored treatment for small businesses was a political goal established by the Federal Constitution as an objective to be achieved by the national economic order. In addition to this goal, the Federal Constitution raised to principles status the freedom of competition and administrative efficiency, which are mandatory standards for state action. Considering such constitutional parameters, the general purpose of this research is to analyze the interrelationship and harmonization of these principles in the context of public contracting involving small businesses. Therefore, this research initially analyzes the phenomenon of public contracting in the Federal Constitution of 1988, addressing mainly the format of State’s administrative function and the necessity for the State to sign contracts. Then, some notes are intended to address the favored treatment of small businesses in the country’s legal system, in an examination whose approach has a constitutional and theoretical aspect on the need to grant advantages to such companies, as well as to analyze the approach that is given by ordinary legislation in order to implement the favored treatment under examination. This study also aims to investigate the manifestation and content of the principles of administrative efficiency and competitive freedom in the economic performance of the Public Administration. The final part of the development of this research is dedicated to analyzing the compatibility of the favored treatment rule for small businesses with administrative efficiency and competitive freedom, taking into account the different perspectives of analysis of public contracting carried out by the Administration. It concludes that there is a need to harmonize favored treatment of small businesses with other constitutional norms, in particular administrative efficiency and competitive freedom, serving such norms as control parameters for granting such benefits to small businesses. This research is based on the analysis of specialized literature on the subjects of constitutional law, administrative law, law and economics, competitive law and regulatory law, as well as the analysis of positive law, which approaches constitutional norms, ordinary legislation and administrative norms. It is also based on the investigation of the jurisprudence of the Supreme Audit Court and the Judicial Courts.