Relative Autonomy beyond the State: Private Transnational Regulation and the Politics of Labour Governance in Bangladesh

Abstract

Private transnational governance institutions increasingly acquire regulatory authority in contexts of weak or inactive state regulation, yet their capacity to exercise it remains contested. We extend Poulantzas' concept of relative autonomy, understood as the capacity to act with organizational independence from specific fractions of capital while reproducing capitalist relations, to the transnational context. We develop this framework through a longitudinal case study of the Bangladesh Accord and its transition to the ready‐made garments (RMG) Sustainability Council (RSC) (2013–2024). We identify three institutional conditions enabling relative autonomy: joint governance between labour and capital, organizational independence, and legally enforceable commitments. Under these conditions, transnational initiatives can move beyond symbolic compliance to discipline global brands and exert credible regulatory power. However, such autonomy is inherently unstable, provoking resistance from domestic capital and state actors, particularly in Global South contexts where such initiatives are contested as external impositions. We show that relative autonomy is not static but emerges from political contestations between capital and labour, and between global and domestic actors. While private governance featuring relative autonomy can temporarily constrain capital, it ultimately reproduces the capital‐labour and North–South power asymmetries of global supply chains.