Supporting governance for climate resilience: Working with political institutions

This working paper examines the role of formal and informal political institutions across different political contexts in shaping different institutional forms of resilience intervention to climate-related shocks and stresses (such as decentralisation processes or state–community partnership building). The aim is to generate insights for practice, in particular for the international community of donors, funders and partners who support resilience building processes.

Political institutions, formal or informal, embody the underlying rules and norms within which organisations such as governments, NGOs or companies, operate (North, 1990) and play a defining role in how people and organisations respond to climate-related shocks and stresses. Democratic relations between national and local government, for example, influence capacities for quick response in an emergency, and these responses can in turn affect economic prosperity, competitiveness, livelihoods and well-being. Governance provides us with a broad term for understanding the institutions working across the state, market and civil society.