Paper details

Paper authors	Dr. Muath Abudalu, Dr. Patricia Ward
In panel on	‘Real’ Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, and Alternatives
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Humanitarian governance is often theorized through formal coordination mechanisms, global standards, and institutional hierarchies. Yet in practice—especially in constrained or contested settings—it is shaped by a wider range of actors and informal arrangements. This paper examines humanitarian logisticians as key agents of “real governance” (de Sardan 2008; Titeca & de Herdt 2011), whose work spans multiple levels of the aid system. Far from being back-end technicians, logisticians operate as intermediaries between headquarters and field, managing institutional priorities, negotiating with local authorities, and translating policy into action. Drawing on over 40 interviews and fieldwork across diverse operational contexts, we conceptualize logisticians as “street diplomats” and systemic actors who navigate organizational hierarchies while enabling humanitarian access on the ground. Their work reveals how governance unfolds not only through formal structures but through everyday logistical improvisation, relational labor, and infrastructural problem-solving. These practices critically shape what aid is delivered, to whom, and under what conditions. By foregrounding logisticians’ situated expertise and mobility within the aid labor hierarchy, this paper reframes humanitarian governance as an embodied, contested, and stratified process—one in which logisticians play a central, if often unrecognized, political role.

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