Why Strong Governance Still Drifts: How Institutions Quietly Lose Alignment

Good governance does not prevent drift—it can enable it. Strong institutions still drift—and often more efficiently. This paper explains why: governance systems translate intent into decision rules that evolve over time. Under conditions of complexity and delayed feedback, small interpretive shifts accumulate into real divergence. Drift is not a breakdown of governance—it is a consequence of how governance works. About the Coherence ProgrammeThe Coherence Programme studies why institutions drift despite appearing aligned. It shows that decisions are made not on intent itself, but on how intent is translated into criteria, metrics, and allocation rules. Using the Operating Spine, the programme traces how…