Limits of Complementarity: Private Governance and Public Regulation of Labour Standards in Brazil’s Garment Supply Chain

Under what conditions can private compliance and public regulation be complementary within global value chains, resulting in promotion of labor standards? This critical case study examines a retailer-led association that developed a code and social audit mechanism in apparel supply chains in Brazil - the world’s third largest apparel market and fourth largest apparel manufacturer - and its relationship with regulation by public authorities. The authors highlight key undertheorized institutional dimensions of effectiveness in private governance and in public inspection shaping the viability of complementarity, and how weaknesses therein undermined initial prospects for public-private complementarity identified by practitioners and analysts in this code. As institutional flaws kept the code distant from better practices theorized and evident internationally in private labor governance, and the public inspectorate and forced labor enforcement regime declined institutionally, labor standards languished. Rather that outright displacement of public by private, or an effective coordination through complementarity, the study finds two rivalrous, competitive systems. Important issues are raised for future research about this Brazilian code and key implications are raised regarding the need for a more sophisticated institutional lens to inform efforts to study complementarity as an analytical construct and develop it as a policy construct in the ILO setting.