The state plays a central role in society by providing public goods to the community, regulating the economy, and mediating the interactions between society and the environment. This role is supported by some unique powers including the ability to make and enforce laws, plan the development of settlements, and provide essential infrastructure. These features make the state a key player in any attempt to adapt to the impacts of climate change but its structure and powers vary considerably from country to country. This raises the important question of what institutional arrangements might enable or constrain an adaptation response. We seek to address this question via a comparative analysis of three cities: the Gold Coast in Australia, Fort Lauderdale in the USA, and Beihai in China. All three are comparable rapidly urbanising, low lying, subtropical coastal cities with similar development patterns, built environments, climates, landforms, socio-demographic compositions and growth drivers (e.g. tourism and property development). They are also all highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Notwithstanding these similarities, the architecture of their state institutions and the distribution of powers across different levels of government vary significantly. By comparing these case studies our research will generate some key insights into the institutional features that influence the ability of the state to respond to the effects of climate change.