Power politics or outstanding universal value?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the principal international organization devoted to the worldwide protection and promotion of natural and cultural heritage deemed of outstanding universal value. To potentially jeopardize the prestige and effectiveness of the organization, however, is the politicisation of its most renowned instrument: the World Heritage Convention and the World Heritage List. Politicisation is intended here as the presence of political factors influencing the convention activity but that are outside its mandate. The present thesis investigates the phenomenon and aims to discover to what extent State Parties’ political factors in the World Heritage Committee influence the chances of enlisting a site in the UNESCO World Heritage List. This has been done through a quantitative analysis of data spanning from 2003 to 2019, offering the most recent findings on the matter. Some political factors showed to influence the probability of inscription. In particular, the more years a country occupied a seat in the World Heritage Committee, the more heritage it has enlisted, and the more it financially contributes to the World Heritage Fund, the higher the probabilities it has to see its sites inscribed in the future.