This paper explores three areas of political theory and their implications for fishery management. First, democratic traditions in local autonomy and public consent establish two major constraints for fishery management. Local autonomy fragments resource management across political jurisdictions; broader policies are fragmented more than local ones. Public consent insures that the publics' values are incorporated into resource management. Policymakers must evaluate public preferences in some way, and the public must believe that the policies are consistent with its values. Thus, effective two-way communication is necessary to gain public acceptance of policies. Second, political theory seeks to better understand “held values” and norms, how they change over time, and how people utilize these values and other information to form political preferences, attitudes, and actions. Management programs must consider a wide range of public values, not just those directly related to the fishery being managed. Finally, political theory also attempts to explain how and why certain policy ideas become accepted and ultimately succeed in solving the problems at hand. The influences of formal and informal “structures,” or institutions and arrangements, often explain policy successes and failures.