Institutional barriers to climate adaptation: Repurposing stakeholder salience in six European living labs

Effective climate-change adaptation depends on governance systems capable of mobilizing diverse forms of power, knowledge, and urgency. Yet adaptation initiatives across Europe routinely underperform because institutional rules suppress the salience of stakeholders most exposed to climate risks. We repurpose stakeholder-salience analysis—from a managerial prioritization tool to an institutional early-warning diagnostic—and develop a mechanism-based explanation of how salience distortions reveal rule-bound limits that undermine adaptive governance. Drawing on original institutional economics and socio-ecological systems theory, we theorize three recurrent functional limits: top-down concentration of decision authority, expert-knowledge monopolies that privilege certified expertise over experiential knowledge, and formal-governance rigidity that truncates temporal horizons and downplays slow-onset threats. We test this diagnostic across six European Living Labs (Germany, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Spain) using a harmonized protocol (documents, stakeholder inventories, interviews, and participatory influence mapping) focused on focal adaptation action situations. Despite major differences in hazards and governance structures, all cases show systematic suppression of one or more salience attributes, producing exclusion of affected groups, reactive planning, and reduced legitimacy. Cross-case comparison shows that single-lever fixes (e.g., broader participation without decision-rights redistribution) yield modest gains, whereas joint adjustment of authority, knowledge validation, and planning horizons strengthens collaborative capacity. The study demonstrates that stakeholder-salience patterns provide a rapid institutional diagnostic of rule-based constraints on adaptation and identifies actionable design levers to support more inclusive, polycentric, and anticipatory governance. • Salience patterns reveal hidden institutional limits in adaptation governance. • Three limits suppress power, legitimacy, and urgency for exposed stakeholders. • Six Living Labs show recurrent exclusion and reactive adaptation outcomes. • Simultaneous reform of authority, knowledge, and timelines boosts capacity. • Provides a rapid diagnostic to redesign rules for inclusive climate adaptation.