ABSTRACT
The World Health Organisation (WHO) was established in 1948 as one of several global organisations that were created in the aftermath of World War II. This chapter asks what would constitute reasonable performance for the WHO, and does so by postulating two concepts of performance that would surely command wide assent: smallpox and Mother Teresa. It examines the WHO's budget for 2006–2007, and explores the extent to which those concepts can be identified within the WHO's line items. The chapter also examines the collectivist presuppositions on which the WHO was founded, and which to this day shape its performance. It discusses the WHO's guiding political and bureaucratic incentives, which lead it to support the interventionist agenda that prevails in the environmental and public health bureaucracies of the Western social democracies. The chapter explains that since the WHO was initially constituted upon false presuppositions, securing improved performance requires a re-constitution of the agency.
