The Politics of Coherence: the formation of a new orthodoxy on linking aid and political responses to chronic political emergencies

This paper is about the changing relationship between humanitarian aid and ‘politics’. Specifically, it is concerned to unpack the much touted calls for increased ‘coherence’ between political and humanitarian responses to complex emergencies. It argues that by sleight of hand, the coherence agenda has been reinterpreted such that humanitarian action has become the primary form of political action, rather than merely a substitute for it. The paper argues that this integrationist approach has been driven by geopolitical events, domestic policy considerations in donor countries and more parochial concerns of aid policy, and is reflected in a number of significant changes in the architecture of the humanitarian system. Importantly, many of the tenets of this new ‘humanitarianism’ have been embraced by the majority of relief agencies, so legitimising it.