Co-management is often put forward as a way to foster sustainability and improve the adaptive capacity of small-scale fisheries. Transformations towards co-management are enabled by processes that support social change, such as nurturing leadership, collective action and learning, as well as political processes that change legislative frameworks from centralized to decentralized decision-making. However, major policy changes can be difficult and change-actors often fail to overcome barriers created by institutional friction, dominant policy discourses or powerful interests supporting the status quo. In the literature, special attention has been paid to social processes that foster cooperation, the role of bridging-actors on the path towards co-management, or conditions that influence its effective implementation. In this paper we shift the attention to political decision-making and changes in policy discourse as an integral part of fisheries’ transformations. We use the well-studied cases of co-management transformations in small-scale fisheries to identify how interactions among political actors and stakeholders, as well as social-ecological interactions, shaped the policy discourse and influenced policy change during the transformation process. By comparing how policy change emerged across four fishery transformation cases, we illustrate the importance of (cross-scale and cross-type) coordination and collaboration among diverse political actors in creating conditions for adoption of legislation, as well as its timing during the policy process. The paper contributes to the literature on sustainability transformations by explaining how policy changes supporting such transformations may emerge, in addition to providing insight on political conditions and processes that could be fostered in order to support policy change towards decentralization in fisheries.

共同管理经常被提出作为促进可持续性和提高小规模渔业适应能力的一种方式。支持社会变革的过程，例如培养领导力、集体行动和学习，以及将立法框架从集中决策转变为分散决策的政治过程，促成了向共同管理的转变。然而，重大的政策变革可能很困难，变革者往往无法克服制度摩擦、主导政策话语或支持现状的强大利益所造成的障碍。在文献中，特别关注促进合作的社会进程、桥梁参与者在共同管理道路上的作用或影响其有效实施的条件。在本文中，我们将注意力转移到作为渔业转型不可或缺的一部分的政治决策和政策话语的变化上。我们使用经过充分研究的小规模渔业共同管理转型案例来确定政治行动者和利益相关者之间的互动以及社会生态互动如何在转型过程中塑造政策话语并影响政策变化。通过比较四个渔业转型案例中出现的政策变化，我们说明了不同政治行为者之间（跨规模和跨类型）协调与合作在为通过立法创造条件方面的重要性，以及在政策过程中的时机.