Translation Dynamics in Public Policy and Governance: A Replicable Method for Observing How Concepts Become Decision Criteria in European Programmes (Recovery and Resilience Facility, Galileo, Erasmus+)

How policy language becomes the rules that actually decide outcomes. Policy defines concepts—but systems act on criteria. This paper traces how EU policy concepts become operational rules, indicators, and verification signals. As meaning is translated into measurable forms, decision systems begin to operate on those representations rather than on the original intent. The paper shows that this process is structured, traceable, and comparable across programmes—revealing where alignment is preserved and where it is lost. 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…