Pledge-and-review is an essential pillar for climate change mitigation up until 2020 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this paper, we build on a survey handed out to participants at the Seventeenth Conference of Parties in 2011 to examine to what extent climate negotiators and stakeholders agree with existing critiques towards pledge-and-review. Among the critique examined, we find that the one most agreed with is that the pledges fall short of meeting the 2 degree target, while the one least agreed with is that pledges are voluntary. We also find that respondents from Annex 1 parties are more critical than respondents from Non-Annex 1 parties. Negotiators display strikingly similar responses regardless of where they are from, while there is a remarkable difference between Annex 1 and Non-Annex 1 environmental non-governmental organizations. We build on these results to discuss the legitimacy of pledge-and-review.