New publication by researchers from the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies: “Where is ‘democracy’ in ‘the most democratic heritage treaty’?”
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January 12, 2026Individual seminars for students of the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw with Prof. Luciano Segreto from the University of Florence – January 13–24, 2026
January 13, 2026
The International Journal of Heritage Studies has published an article by Prof. Hanna Schreiber, Head of the UNESCO Chair in Public and Global Processes of Intangible Cultural Heritage Management at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw, and Dr. Julia Krzesicka-Haberko, assistant at the UNESCO Chair at theFaculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw, entitled “Where is ‘democracy’ in ‘the most democratic heritage treaty’?”
The article critically analyzes the extent to which and in what sense the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is “democratic” – both in its declarations and in its management practices. The authors identify four approaches to democracy using Elinor Ostrom’s institutional analysis framework and show how different forms of democracy manifest themselves at the level of community actions, intergovernmental procedures, and the Convention’s constitutive norms. In the context of global democratic regression, the publication organizes the debate and indicates where democracy in this regime is understood as a political system, and where it is a grassroots practice, a professed value, or a procedure for action.
The work was created as part of a research grant from the National Science Centre Sonata 15 No. 2019/35/D/HS5/04247: “Between the heritage of the world and humanity: a study of international heritage regimes through the prism of Elinor Ostrom’s institutional analysis” led by Prof. Hanna Schreiber.
