Coherence through Drift: How Institutions Govern Representations Instead of Reality

How institutions forget what they are for.Modern institutions have become extraordinarily capable of coordination, measurement, optimization, and control. Yet many people increasingly experience institutions as strangely disconnected from the realities they were created to serve. This paper explores how institutions gradually lose relation to meaning—not through collapse or bad intent, but through layers of abstraction, translation, metrics, and representation that slowly become realities in their own right. Across governance, organizations, AI systems, and public life, institutions often become highly effective at managing representations of coherence while losing visibility into the human and operational conditions beneath them. The paper examines how drift of purpose emerges structurally as institutional intent is translated into criteria, dashboards, allocation systems, and operational proxies that eventually begin governing decisions in place of the realities they were meant to reflect. What begins as coordination gradually becomes substitution: institutions optimize representations of alignment while losing relation to their underlying purpose. Bringing together the conceptual frameworks, empirical observations, and governance architectures developed across the Coherence Programme, the paper argues that resilient institutions require more than efficiency or innovation alone. They require the capacity to remain reflectively connected to the realities they claim to steward. Coherence is therefore not control. It is the ongoing ability of an institution to remain in living relation with its purpose. At its core, this is a paper about whether institutions can still remember what they are for. 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 purpose becomes action across governance layers, making drift and coherence directly observable within decision systems. The research applies to public institutions, capital allocation, and AI-mediated environments, where the durability of decision rules determines long-term institutional reliability.Programme citation: Mertens, R. E. U. (2026). The Coherence Programme: A Conceptual Overview and Entry Point to the Research Programme.Resources: Coherence Programme OSF repository and https://thecoherenceprogramme.orgVersion 1.00: First public release.Version 1.01: Added Zenodo Concept DOIVersion 1.02: Minor editorial refinements, typographical corrections, UK English standardisation, and readability improvements.Version 1.03: Retitled paper. Minor conceptual clarifications, terminology refinements, and editorial improvements.Version 1.04: Minor conceptual clarifications, consistency improvements, reviewer-informed refinements, and editorial updates across the programme.