4 - Performance Review

Summary

The managerial technology of performance review is an indispensable tool in rendering decentralized managerial governance coordinated and coherent, and Chapter 4 discusses the effects of the UN’s system of results-based management on its counter-terrorism strategy. The chapter shows how performance review is driven by both carrot and stick. As to techniques of gratification, it looks at how the UN uses capacity-building programmes to address deficiencies in nation-states’ counter-terrorism practice on the basis of Counter-Terrorism Committee assessments. On the one hand, nation-states in receipt of such assistance are supposed to realize their sovereign status by exercising responsible leadership over their development; on the other hand, the UN agencies which run capacity-building programmes are gratified by the award of funds for demonstrating value for money. Performance review is only driven by the threat of punishment when gratification fails, and the chapter uses the Financial Action Task Force’s system of mutual evaluations to illustrate this. It shows how the practice of imposing counter-measures on recalcitrant nation-states serves to reiterate the importance of responsible leadership, rather than insist upon the implementation of a specific measure to counter-terrorist financing.