The 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention (the Convention) is “a regime at crossroads” (p. 231). Although it has been operational for fifty years, questions of effectiveness surround its regime. Hamman and Hølleland's original approach frames it through the lens of compliance, bringing international law into dialogue with heritage studies and archaeology policy.

The authors generally define compliance as adherence to established rules of conduct (p. 8), in reference to Ronald B. Mitchell's ‘Compliance Theory’ (1993). For this reason, the book is also relevant to the debate around implementation and compliance in international law.

The authors analyse twelve compliance cases of sites inscribed on the World Heritage (WH) list for their natural and/or cultural Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). In each case, the wrong action or inaction of the state threatens the OUV of the site, leading to a challenge to maintaining the standards of the Convention over time.

The first Chapter introduces the concept of implementation and provides a review of the literature on the Convention, both in heritage studies and international law, and explains the decision to write a book on compliance and its relevance by pointing to the growing number of cases of non-compliance within the framework of the Convention. Chapter 2 provides a broader contextual view of the WH regime. Chapter 3 describes the procedural mechanisms for inscribing sites on the WH List. Chapter 4 takes a close look into the non-compliance response system. For this purpose, the Convention introduced a mechanism of monitoring that has improved knowledge on the state of conservation of sites since the 1980s (p. 125). Chapter 5 examines the List of World Heritage in Danger (IDL), one of the stricter mechanisms of non-compliance response designed to safeguard listed properties against threats such as urban development, neglect, armed conflict, and environmental changes (figure p. 128). Chapter 6 analyses the deletion process by which listed properties lose their status.

In these last two chapters, the authors introduce the core components of the compliance system formed by the IDL and deletion procedures. They discuss the reluctance to suppress properties that have seriously deteriorated since their inscription and lost compliance with the criteria that propelled them to inscription initially. It remains to be seen whether deletion is an effective compliance tool. As they write, “absent of empirical evidence, it is difficult to say whether all or indeed most State parties are likely to see deletion as truly a sanction” (p. 219). The reader is left with the hope that future research will involve empirical study, thereby completing the policy research of this book and enabling more sustainable solutions.

Finally, in observing the increased proceduralization in the WH regime, the authors conclude that they found no significant link that compliance by increased proceduralization and rulemaking has sustained or enhanced the OUV (p. 231). Overall, this work involves a high level of technicality in law and policy and scientific data analysis, highlighting the dynamic between scientific reports and decision-making in heritage policies.