Theorizing power and agency in state-initiated municipal climate change adaptation: integrating reflexive capacity into adaptive capacity

Abstract

Based on a review of existing research on adaptive capacity, we identify a research gap in theorizing institutions, power structures, and agency in municipal climate change adaptation processes. Drawing on sociological institutionalism, governmentality, and communicative planning theory, we use post-structuralist concepts of power to to elucidate the collective (de-)mobilization of existing stocks of capacities within municipal institutions of adaptation with a focus on structural power and agency in participation processes. The concept of reflexive capacity is introduced as the ability of organizations such as municipal administrations to incorporate diverse stakeholders and knowledge into decision-making processes in a local context, which is derived from the relationship of power with with power over. The emergence and transformation of reflexive capacity are illustrated and discussed with one case study municipality in Germany, revealing the potential of this concept for the analysis of participation in adaptation processes and the power structures that are inherent to them. In the paper, we incorporate the concept of reflexive capacity with established concepts of adaptive capacity, creating an integrated framework termed institutional adaptive capacity. The analysis concludes that examining power structures and agency in the context of climate change adaptation explains how capacity stocks and individual psychosocial capacity mobilization are institutionally embedded and influenced by reflexive capacity. We argue that the consideration of power structures and agency can provide a complementary approach to explaining adaptive capacity and call for further transdisciplinary empirical research on this topic in different settings of state-initiated adaptation processes.