Making Mainstreaming Work for Climate Change Adaptation: A Multi‐Level Analysis of Adaptive Policy Capacity Building in Fishing and Aquaculture Governance in Chile

ABSTRACT International organizations commonly promote climate change adaptation through mainstreaming, that is, top‐down processes aimed at national and subnational/territorial capacity building. This case study integrates institutional adaptive capacity into the policy capacity framework to deliver a clearer and comprehensive multi‐level analysis of the characteristics that affect policy capacity for making mainstreaming work. Perspectives from bureaucrats and territorial stakeholders in the case of Chile suggest three principal challenges: institutionalizing a robust interpretation of sustainability, implementing a bottom‐up approach to centralized vertical coordination, and enhancing collective decision‐making within territorial multi‐actor committees.