The legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) as institutions for social and environmental governance in the global economy has received much scholarly attention over the past years. To date, however, research has yet to focus on assessing the legitimacy of MSIs in their interactions with other actors within larger systems of deliberation. Drawing on the deliberative systems perspective developed within deliberative democracy theory, we theorise a normative framework to evaluate the roles of MSIs within the broader systems of governance they co-construct through their interactions with other initiatives, governments, non-governmental organisations, and other external actors. As we demonstrate in our evaluation of the illustrative case of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety as a MSI in the context of the Bangladeshi garment industry, this framework can help researchers assess whether a MSI ultimately serves to enhance or undermine the deliberative legitimacy of the overall system of which it forms a part.

Adam Smith writes favorably about innovation in Wealth of Nations while writing unfavorably about a figure associated with innovation: the projector. His criticism of projectors prompts many scholars to claim that Smith disapproves of entrepreneurship. But Smith criticizes the projector not because he acts as an entrepreneur but because he fails to meet Smith’s moral standards for entrepreneurship. In Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith conceives of a framework for moral entrepreneurship based on prudence. The framework consists of two principles: first, approach everyday matters with the general “tenor of conduct” that governs your life and trade, and second, approach life-changing matters with prudence and justice. Recognizing that Smith is concerned with the total effect that an entrepreneurial venture has on society beyond its immediate profits opens the door to engage with contemporary research that studies the ethical and moral externalities of entrepreneurship.

The topic of Manuel Velasquez's clear and persuasive paper is of great significance today—far greater than is commonly realized. For multinational corporations have come to play an extraordinary—and largely unchecked—role in shaping the conditions of life today around the world. It is not so much that they have begun to control legislative processes—although there is some of this—as that they have increasingly escaped governmental control by playing governments off one another. Accordingly, the board rooms in New York, Toronto, and Amsterdam have more and more replaced the legislative chambers in Washington, Ottawa, and the Hague as internationally significant centers of power. And where the interests of business and government have tended to merge, there one finds the most powerful international forces in the world today—witness Japan, Inc.