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The contextual links are being exposed via contextual module. just by looking into the module, you would find the function contextual_preprocess.

 $variables['title_suffix']['contextual_links'] = array(
      '#type' =&gt; 'contextual_links', 
      '#contextual_links' =&gt; $element['#contextual_links'], 
      '#element' =&gt; $element,
    );


So my first guess would be, that you are missing in the block.tpl.php or page.tpl.php, etc... templates to output the $title_suffix variable?

&lt;?php print render($title_suffix); ?&gt;