The pace of climate change is outpacing the scale of our response, uncertainty is on the rise everywhere, and climate action often focuses on global/national policy or strengthening frontline response. But there is an important group in between that is frequently overlooked, and who play an important role in shaping responses on the ground: mid-level actors. These are the people who interpret policy, build relationships across institutions, and keep systems working under pressure.
Drawing on more than a decade of research, I argue in this blog that understanding this ‘missing middle’ is essential if climate action is to become more reliable in an increasingly uncertain world where climate extremes are becoming the new normal.
Compounding climate events
We know that climate change is no longer a distant or occasional disruption. In May 2026, many parts of the UK experienced a heatwave, while swathes of the South Asian subcontinent are currently in the grip of sweltering temperatures. In both these regions, which are also RELIABLE research sites, low rainfall and dry conditions are anticipated in the coming months, which will compound the hot-dry weather extremes. In many places, hazards do not arrive one by one; they overlap, trigger one another, or unfold in sequence, creating what are called compound events. This makes climate response harder, because institutions are often set up to deal with one hazard at a time rather than several interacting risks and uncertainties, which can produce differential impacts on the ground.
This raises a practical question: how do decisions actually get made when conditions are changing so quickly, risks are pervasive and uncertainty is high? Policy debates often focus on high-level frameworks, early warning systems, or local delivery. Yet between these levels sits a group of actors whose work is crucial but often under-recognised. These are the people in the middle – those who translate policy into action, negotiate across sectors, connect different kinds of knowledge, and make real-time judgments as events unfold or what we have called ‘governing on the go’.
Why do we need to look at the middle?
Mid-level actors sit between policy design and frontline implementation. Depending on the setting, they may be the control room operators who deal with a highly dynamic situation in crisis settings, irrigation officials who craft workable plans for flood response, or NGO managers who broker and build alliances. They are often the people who keep systems moving in messy conditions. They broker relationships, interpret rules, adapt procedures to local realities, and sometimes enable change where formal systems are too rigid to respond. At other times, they can also become gatekeepers who can slow down or block reforms.
Despite the crucial role played by these actors in shaping policy processes, their role and agency are under-recognised in scholarship, prompting some scholars to characterise them as the ‘missing middle’.
The many faces of the middle
My earlier research has repeatedly shown how important these actors are. Across different contexts, they are not simply implementing instructions from above, but they are actively interpreting, negotiating and reshaping policy and action on the ground.
Here are some examples from my research, shared as a brief reflection from my work and how it has shaped our preliminary thinking on RELIABLE.
- Gatekeepers and subverters: In my research on water policy in India, I worked with engineers involved in implementing the water licensing reform. Many felt that the reforms did not fit realities on the ground, especially at the farm level. Hence, they reshaped the reforms both actively and discursively and what started as a reform to check the authority of the state ended up sharpening its reach.
- Network builders: In Sri Lanka, my research on intersectoral collaboration explored why one district achieved better nutrition outcomes than others. A key reason was the role played by mid-level officials across sectors such as health, food and education. They worked creatively through informal ties and local relationships to make coordination possible. Informal relationships and local connections proved crucial in achieving these outcomes.
- Translators and mediators: In research on climate change and uncertainty in India, working across dryland Kutch, the Sundarbans and Mumbai, we found that the people in the middle varied by site, and their identity and agency were shaped by the broader policy environment. However, they shared an important role. They connected local experience with expert assessments and linked up different levels of decision-making.
Taken together, these examples suggest that mid-level actors are often central to how systems actually function under pressure. They carry institutional memory, connect different parts of the system, and adapt formal rules to practical action on the ground. This is the starting point for the RELIABLE project.
What RELIABLE is asking
As we begin fieldwork in the UK and India, we are seeking to answer ‘who helps hold response systems together when hazards strike, and when risks and uncertainty are high?’. We are particularly interested in three things: how these actors experience and respond to risks and uncertainty in their everyday work and when hazards strike; the formal and informal relationships that help them act across sectors and institutions; and the wider policy environments that enable or constrain what they can do.
Eventually, we aim to understand how reliability is built in real time, not as an abstract ideal, but through everyday practices of coordination, judgment and adaptation. Our early findings already point towards a complex network of layered relationships. Each site has a distinct institutional trajectory which determines who the middle is, where they are located and what they can do.
Since climate hazards are becoming more complex and uncertain, reliable climate action will depend not only on better policy frameworks or frontline delivery. It will also depend on the people in the middle who connect systems, navigate uncertainty, and make action possible in constrained environments. Making this missing middle more visible is essential to understanding how climate preparedness and long term adaptation can work more effectively and more fairly.