From Function to Fiction: Why Projects Don’t Transform Territories

Organizational survival, fragmented governance, and the illusion of impact

Author: Monica Bianco, Ecosystems Cooperation advisor -CRF Italy

Abstract

Despite decades of investment in international development and cooperation projects, most initiatives fail to generate structural change in the territories they target. This article explores the institutional, organizational, and cognitive mechanisms that explain why project-based interventions often produce limited or symbolic outcomes. It argues that the persistence of projects reflects not their effectiveness, but their utility in sustaining organizations, navigating donor logics, and performing accountability rituals. Drawing on development sociology, organizational theory, and case-based evidence, we examine how cooperation projects become forms of institutional fiction—appearing transformative while reproducing fragmentation, short-termism, and superficial alignment.

Introduction: The Problem Behind the Outputs

International cooperation is filled with success stories—projects completed, workshops delivered, partnerships established, outputs documented. Yet across much of the Global South (and increasingly within European peripheries), these projects leave little lasting institutional, social, or economic transformation.

Hospitals are built without staff; innovation hubs lack ecosystems; laws are passed without enforcement capacity. The gap between what is declared and what is structurally changed is not accidental—it is systemic. As David Booth observes, “the development business has perfected the art of being active without being effective” [1].

To understand this paradox, we must look beyond project design to the deeper organizational and political structures that shape how cooperation is practiced.

1. Projects as Instruments of Organizational Survival

For many of the actors involved—local governments, NGOs, universities, agencies—the primary function of projects is not transformation, but survival. As funds from donors and competitive calls become essential for operational continuity, institutions adapt to funding cycles, shaping their agendas, staff, and narratives accordingly.

As Diane Stone points out, “project funding has transformed universities and think tanks into consultancy-like entities, oriented to short-term deliverables and performance indicators” [2]. Similarly, local governments may initiate projects not because they reflect territorial strategies, but because they offer access to investment, visibility, or political credit.

In this logic, the project becomes a strategic compromise: a vehicle to mobilize resources under externally defined conditions. The real objective is not to solve systemic problems, but to remain visible, fundable, and present in the cooperation ecosystem.

2. The Fragmented Architecture of Implementation

Cooperation systems are structurally fragmented. Projects are often implemented by ad hoc consortia, parallel units, or technical operators external to existing institutions. This creates duplication, weak coordination, and institutional discontinuity.

As Bebbington and McCourt show in their research on aid governance, “projects often set up systems that are unconnected to domestic administrations, undermining long-term capacity while overburdening limited managerial bandwidth” [3].

Even when integrated into public bodies, projects rarely align with internal procedures, financial systems, or career paths. Staff are hired on short-term contracts, knowledge is siloed in reports, and coordination happens only when demanded by donors.

The result is a cooperation architecture where each project becomes a closed circuit—self-referential, bounded, and largely disconnected from institutional or territorial learning.

3. The Performance of Impact

The project economy also generates powerful incentives for performative success. Donors demand evidence of impact; implementing agencies respond by producing outputs that are easily measured but weakly connected to transformation.

As Eyben and Guijt argue, “impact becomes a spectacle, with actors curating indicators, stories, and visuals to demonstrate relevance” [4]. The problem is not falsification, but selective representation. Reports emphasize deliverables; complexity and failure are relegated to annexes—if mentioned at all.

The project thus becomes a fictional construct: a space where real efforts are undertaken, but framed in ways that obscure structural limitations, political conflict, or institutional inertia. Evaluation becomes a ritual of closure, not an instrument of change.

4. Epistemic Capture and Strategic Cynicism

A further dimension is epistemic. Over time, institutions and actors adapt not only their procedures but their language and problem definitions to fit the project grammar. What doesn’t fit—emergent issues, contentious priorities, or long-term uncertainty—is excluded from proposals or reframed in acceptable terms.

James Ferguson called this the “anti-politics machine”: a system that “renders political and social tensions as technical problems to be solved by neutral interventions” [5]. But this depoliticization is now widely recognized and sometimes strategically accepted by actors in the field.

What emerges is a form of strategic cynicism: actors know the limits of the project model, but continue to engage with it because there are few alternatives. Projects are written to win, not to solve; implemented to comply, not to evolve. The result is a cooperation system where form trumps substance and reproduction overrides reflection.

5. Lost Opportunity for Institutional Learning

Perhaps the most damaging effect of this dynamic is the erosion of institutional memory and learning. Since projects are time-bound, knowledge is often lost at the end of the cycle. Lessons learned are poorly integrated; staff turnover is high; documentation is underused or inaccessible.

In many contexts, the same problems are diagnosed repeatedly, with minor variations in terminology. Each project begins from scratch, claiming novelty while ignoring decades of experience. As Pritchett, Woolcock, and Andrews write, “development projects often pretend that no one has ever tried to do this before” [6].

This ignorance is not natural—it is produced by a system that rewards execution over reflection, novelty over continuity, and outputs over relationships.

Conclusion: The Project as a Fictional Infrastructure

The project model persists not because it delivers transformation, but because it satisfies a series of systemic needs: funding flows, institutional positioning, political credit, and symbolic legitimacy. It is a form of institutional fiction—partially real, partially performed—enacted by rational actors within a constrained system.

This does not mean that all projects fail, nor that those involved lack commitment. But it does mean that, as currently structured, the project system is not designed to produce deep, cumulative, territorial change. Its logic of fragmentation, performance, and bounded timeframes works against the very complexity it claims to address.

Any serious attempt to reform cooperation must begin by acknowledging this fiction—not to condemn actors, but to reveal the structural forces that shape their options. Only then can we imagine alternatives that are not only more honest, but more capable of transformation.

References

1. Booth, D. (2012). Development as a Collective Action Problem: Addressing the Real Challenges of African Governance. Overseas Development Institute.
2. Stone, D. (2004). “Transfer Agents and Global Networks in the ‘Transnationalization’ of Policy.” Journal of European Public Policy, 11(3).
3. Bebbington, A. & McCourt, W. (2007). “Donor-NGO Relations and Representations of Development Knowledge in NGO Policy Documents.” World Development, 35(11).
4. Eyben, R. & Guijt, I. (2015). “The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development.” Practical Action Publishing.
5. Ferguson, J. (1990). The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge University Press.
6. Pritchett, L., Woolcock, M., & Andrews, M. (2013). Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation. Journal of Development Studies, 49(1).