Work

Democratic legitimacy and multi-stakeholder platform design in sustainability governance

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Addressing complex sustainability challenges such as food system transformation requires cooperation across sectors, governance levels, and stakeholder groups. Yet such cooperation is often hindered by conflicting interests, distributional tensions, and declining trust in political institutions, which challenge both the input and output legitimacy of representative democratic decision-making processes. Deliberative and participatory sustainability governance mechanisms often struggle to deliver effective policy outcomes with high output legitimacy, while technocratic forms of sustainability governance often lack democratic input legitimacy. We argue that well-designed multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) can generate synergies between input and output legitimacy, rather than reinforcing trade-offs, thus serving as meaningful complements to representative democratic institutions. Drawing on sustainability governance and democratic legitimacy literatures, we develop a framework linking key MSP design features to both forms of legitimacy. We illustrate this through Germany's Commission on the Future of Agriculture, an MSP, and conclude with a research agenda on MSP legitimacy in sustainability governance.

Source: Cell Reports Sustainability

DOI: 10.1016/j.crsus.2026.100829

Authors: Maiken Maier, Lukas Paul Fesenfeld, Karin Ingold

Institutions: University of Bern, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

Language: English

Topic: Political Theory and Democracy

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Climate action

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $5,730