The democratic quality of private multi-stakeholder governance is an important subject of academic and political debate. On the one hand, private multi-stakeholder arrangements are seen as a way of democratizing international environmental governance. On the other hand, the democratic potential...

This article suggests that understanding legitimization processes of private governance initiatives requires a multi-dimensional approach. This suggestion has been operationalized in three aspects that can be used to better understand such processes: legality, moral justifications, and...