The five elements - governmental authorities, public discourse, corporate and market interests, citizens' associations and international agencies - may help in figuring out the complex and challenging purpose of the research work presented in this volume which is nothing less than the history of the governance of cultural and natural heritage in eleven countries, from its outset to the present. Speaking about governance is challenging. The term has been vastly used and misused. But today, when the feverish popularity of the concept is probably in decline, we rest with one solid conviction at least: that social, economic, cultural and institutional processes are governed not only through government (be it national or local) with its legislative, administrative and jurisdictional mechanisms, but through a larger array of different actors and factors. These include schools and universities, citizens associations, public opinion, economic corporations, non-governmental organizations, learned societies, unions, media, international agencies, clubs, consultants etc. In fact, the reader is going to meet quite a few of these actors in this publication; they are the unavoidable characters involved in the story the authors have set out to tell.
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