UNESCO’s World Heritage List: power, national interest, and expertise

Abstract

With almost universal membership, the World Heritage Convention is at the heart of the global governance of heritage. Nested within UNESCO, the Convention sets the parameters for determining which natural and/or cultural sites can receive the prestigious ‘World Heritage Property’ designation and be added to the World Heritage List. What started in the early 1970s as an expert-based classification procedure focused on heritage preservation has become an ostensive political process, and a hotbed of competing nations interested in the domestic and international power deriving from inscriptions in the World Heritage List. This paper takes this empirical case as a springboard to reflect upon two key interrelated issues: the politicization of expertise and classification by International Organizations, and heritage as a national identity project and projection of ‘soft power’. In doing so, it highlights how changes in the global system since the late 19th century – for example, colonialism, Cold War, ‘emerging’ powers – affected the global politics of heritage. The paper adds to the incredibly trans-disciplinary field of world heritage research by anchoring itself in International Relations literature, mostly through a Constructivist-based approach.

Chinese power in the World Heritage Committee: From learning the game to shaping the rules

“…These developments cannot be separated from a growing tendency in international relations to treat heritage, and particularly its recognition as World Heritage, as an important resource for projecting different forms of power (Barros Leal Farias, 2022; Nakano & Zhu, 2020). China seems particularly aware of the role heritage may play in pursuing global power ambitions (Ludwig & Walton, 2020).…”