Persistent implementation failures in UNESCO heritage management: four emblematic cases from Sicily

This article analyses four cases of persistent implementation failure in the management of UNESCO heritage in Sicily from the perspective of administrative science. It connects the literature on the policy-implementation gap with scholarship on policy failure, failure persistence, administrative capacity, institutional learning, and the political and reputational dimensions of failure. Drawing on a qualitative comparative analysis of four UNESCO sites, based on a most-similar-systems design and grounded in documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews, the article argues that the observed shortcomings stem not primarily from the absence of regulatory or planning instruments, but rather from recurrent deficits in administrative capacity, interinstitutional coordination, meaningful participation, and organisational learning. The analysis further shows that, although significant at the implementation level, failure tends to have low public salience and is therefore politically tolerable. These findings have implications for scholarship on policy implementation, multilevel governance, and cultural heritage management. Finally, the article points to the need to rethink heritage stewardship through the lens of relational infrastructures, rather than through the isolated performance of individual institutions alone.