Beyond the Map: How the Coherence of Daily Decisions Determines the Fate of Strategic Plans—A Case Study of Tunisia's Education 2026-2030 strategy

The paper’s primary contribution is a theoretical framework that explains why national strategic plans so often fail to translate ambitious objectives into concrete results. It argues that repeated goals and recurring actions across successive planning cycles signal a deeper structural problem: the misalignment between long term strategic intent and the everyday governmental decisions (in many levels) that determine real outcomes. The framework integrates insights from implementation theory, principal–agent dynamics, governance research, and political economy to show how coherence in daily practices—resource allocation, bureaucratic incentives, regulatory enforcement, and crisis management—is the decisive factor shaping implementation success.Tunisia’s 2026–2030 Strategic Plan is used solely to illustrate the framework’s explanatory power. The plan itself is analytically robust and accurately diagnoses structural challenges in education, regional inequality, and labor market alignment. Yet its implementation difficulties stem from governance constraints—centralized decision making, institutional erosion, and fiscal stress—that systematically undermine decision making coherence. These dynamics exemplify the broader mechanisms identified by the framework rather than constituting the empirical focus of the study.The paper concludes that improving development outcomes requires strengthening the institutional capacity to ensure consistent, aligned, and credible daily decisions. More sophisticated plans cannot compensate for weak implementation systems; only coherent governance can bridge the persistent gap between strategic vision and achieved results.Keywords: Implementation Gap, Principal-Agent Theory, Means-Ends Decoupling, Coherence of Daily Decisions, Vernacular Governance, Institutional Lock-In, Education policy.