Dr. Sho Akahoshi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Law and Politics at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. His main research interest is global governance, especially focusing on coordination mechanisms for various actors related to global issues such as IGOs, NGOs or corporations. His papers are published in the International Relations (国際政治),United Nations Studies (国連研究), CDR Quarterly and other edited volumes.

Session

Dr. Akahoshi’s presentation focused on his research regarding the theoretical analysis of orchestration in international humanitarian governance, using the case study of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). He started his presentation by discussing the complexity of humanitarian assistance and hence the importance of cooperation between actors, as well as the research question that forms the basis of his inquiry: Under what condition can OCHA provide effective coordination?

Dr. Akahoshi went on to discuss his usage of orchestration (Abbott et al., 2015) as the underlying analytical framework of his research and how it goes beyond prevalent theories such as principal-agent theories and sociological institutionalism. He continued with a discussion of his case study, using within-case comparison which looks at four past attempts to reform humanitarian governance, namely 1) The 1991 establishment of Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), 2) The reformulation of DHA into OCHA in 1997, 3) The Humanitarian Reform in 2005 and 4) The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. He concluded by discussing his findings and its theoretical implications.