This chapter provides a critical assessment of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs), a framework for cooperative, goal-oriented partnerships for addressing policy challenges and seeking outcomes that meet the needs of diverse interests that cannot be achieved by stakeholders acting on their own. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the purposes and range of applications of multi-stakeholder partnerships. It continues with two case studies that explores tensions between theory and practice by highlighting ways that processes and outcomes of two example MSPs are related to choices about, for example, the entity that convenes the partnership, the goals of the partnership, the form of stakeholder engagement, and the scale of focus of the partnership. Choices differentially emphasize and reflect tradeoffs of features associated with the evaluative criteria. The chapter emphasizes that MSPs can play an important role in achieving better outcomes by attending to opportunities for learning. It concludes with a discussion of how MSPs can promote social learning, which is critical to successful participation and implicit in the evaluative criteria used in this volume.