Diffusion of climate policy integration in adaptation strategies: translating the EU mandate into UK and Danish national contexts

Abstract In this paper, we examine how the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy and especially its pivotal principle of policy integration of climate adaptation has diffused into the climate adaptation strategies of Member States. We explore how this quest for climate adaptation policy integration (CPI) was pushed by vertical diffusion of the framing and policy mixes launched at the EU level. To do so, we analyse and compare national climate adaptation strategies in two EU Member States—the UK and Denmark—during 2013–2021, which witnessed Brexit and increased attention to climate impacts. Conceptually and analytically, we draw on the policy diffusion literature centring on four potential drivers of vertical policy diffusion: interests, rights, ideology and recognition. Furthermore, to scrutinize what is diffused, we conceptualize climate policy integration including the rationale and policy instruments for climate policy integration. We find that both countries’ approaches to climate change adaptation have been shaped by rights-based diffusion in a mixture of shadow hierarchy, soft power and activation of other policy areas with binding directives and observe how what appears to be asymmetrical diffusion has strong elements of symmetrical diffusion. We further identify divergence between the cases before and after Brexit and in mandating local level actions.