 Rational proceduralist conceptions of democratic legitimacy add conditions that refer to the quality of outcomes to those that apply to the procedural properties of democratic decision-making. While pure proceduralists argue that the inevitable contestedness of standards that define the quality of outcomes makes it impossible to ground legitimacy in them, defenders of mixed conceptions are concerned that a fair process may lead to irrational outcomes—outcomes of unnecessarily and unacceptably low quality. The general thought underlying rational proceduralist conceptions is that the fairness of the democratic decision-making process is not sufficient to establish the legitimacy of its outcomes.