Climate Adaptation as Politics under Hybrid Governance: Risk Redistribution and Local Authority Resilience in Sweden

Abstract Climate change increasingly generates conditions of persistent governance turbulence, placing growing demands on local authorities as frontline risk managers while simultaneously exposing them to new forms of vulnerability. Despite extensive knowledge about climate risks and growing policy attention, climate adaptation remains unevenly implemented and institutionally fragmented. This article conceptualises adaptation as a governance process embedded in hybrid, multi-level governance arrangements and examines how such arrangements shape local authority resilience. Drawing on interpretive policy analysis and securitisation theory, it applies and further develops the concept of in-securitisation to capture how governance practices intended to enhance security may instead redistribute risk and generate new forms of vulnerability. Using Sweden as a critical case, the analysis shows how the securitisation of climate change increases political attention to adaptation while devolving responsibility to municipalities with uneven capacity under conditions of soft steering. An illustrative case of groundwater scarcity, supported by a set of empirical reference points, demonstrates how risk recognition can coexist with decentralised responsibility and fragmented implementation. The findings suggest that resilience cannot be understood solely in terms of preparedness or technical capacity. Rather, it emerges as an outcome of how governance systems allocate authority, responsibility and acceptable risk under conditions of persistent turbulence. By linking climate adaptation research with security-governance scholarship, the article contributes to research on climate governance and security by demonstrating how adaptation may redistribute responsibility, normalise vulnerability and reshape local resilience over time.