Abstract
Five years after the collapse of Rana Plaza – a disaster that killed 1133 garment workers – the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a multi-stakeholder program designed to set labour standards for the garment industry, was closed by Bangladesh's highest court. Widely hailed as a promising example of transnational regulation, the Accord was never successfully institutionalized locally. Based on archival and ethnographic work in Bangladesh, I suggest that although the Accord successfully upgraded factory safety standards, the failure of the transnationally-supported program to build widespread support among local employers, workers, and government led to its closure and replacement.