Abstract The study of fisheries governance has made considerable progress in recent years largely as a result of the concerted actions of the social sciences. A particular focus for this work has been the concept of participative governance and the co-management systems in which responsibility for management is shared between the state and user groups, usually at the local level. With the publication of two books – a scholarly treatise and a practitioners’ guide – drawing upon the same international project, our understanding of the complexities of governance in the context of fisheries takes a major step forward. We need to recognise three distinct but interconnected levels of governance: the first dealing with day to day issues of management; the second concerned with institutional arrangements; the third focusing on the construction of images, values, principles and criteria to guide fisheries policy making along a consistent path. The authors’ contention is that too much attention has been paid to the end stages of the policy process and too little to refining the principles that underlie sound decision making in the face of often difficult choices. Much of the progress in this field is due to an increasingly multidisciplinary approach followed by the social sciences.