 The Political Economy of Private and Public Regulation in Post-Rana Plaza BangladeshJennifer Bair, Mark Anner and Jeremy Blasi ILR Review, 2020, vol. 73, issue 4, 969-994 Abstract: How do public and private labor governance regimes intersect in global supply chains and with what effects? Based on fieldwork in Bangladesh, including interviews with garment industry stakeholders, this article examines the main public and private regulatory reforms instituted in post-Rana Plaza Bangladesh: the Sustainability Compact and the Bangladesh Accord, respectively. Despite the Accord’s substantial achievements in improving workplace safety, particularly relative to the progress achieved under the Compact, findings show that government and industry actors in Bangladesh have resisted the Accord’s efforts to empower workers for fear that improved labor standards would threaten managerial control over one of the global garment industry’s largest and cheapest labor forces. Rather than being an example of complementarity between private and public governance, or an effective substitution of one by the other, post-Rana Plaza Bangladesh represents an undermining of effective private regulation by a state opposed to pro-labor reforms. Keywords: apparel; Bangladesh; health and safety; private governance; labor standards; freedom of association; global supply chains (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:73:y:2020:i:4:p:969-994 Access Statistics for this article More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.