Social inclusion in climate change adaptation decision making and implementation has long been espoused by researchers and practitioners with primary focusing on factors affecting community participation. This raises the question on how different stakeholders, especially powerholders, subjectify and create an environment for community participation. In this paper, we utilised the intersection between community participation and the subjectivities lens to examine how dominant powers systematically operate to influence community engagement in adaptation and how and why local communities are included or excluded from adaptation as a result of subject-making, using Vietnam as a case study. Using semi-structured interviews with policymakers, practitioners, local authorities and focus group discussions with local communities, we examined how the key respondents stereotyped local roles and capacity in agricultural adaptation activities. The results showed that subtle but pervasive subjectivities and subject-making processes constrain community participation by affecting perceptions and, subsequently, actions of key stakeholders that undermine local roles and capacity in undertaking adaptation. This perpetuates the power imbalance between local communities and governments at different levels of administration. The findings contribute to the prevailing scholarship of climate change adaptation that, under an authoritarian regime, local capacity is undermined not only by powerholders but by community members as they consent to government decisions.