This article takes seriously the proposition that ideas and concepts, both good and bad, have an impact on international public policy. It situates the emergence of governance, good governance and global governance, as well as the UN's role in the conceptual process. Although 'governance' is as old as human history, this essay concentrates on the intellectual debates of the 1980s and 1990s but explores such earlier UN-related ideas as decolonisation, localisation and human rights, against which more recent thinking has been played out. A central analytical perspective is the tension between many academics and international practitioners who employ 'governance' to connote a complex set of structures and processes, both public and private, while more popular writers tend to use it synonymously with 'government'.

Governance, good governance and global governance: conceptual and actual challenges

This longitudinal study examined behavioral, cognitive, and demographic factors associated with early school dropout. Follow-up assessments were completed on a sample of girls (n = 248) and boys (n = 227) who had first been seen when they were in the seventh grade. School status was determined for all living subjects; 99% of them were interviewed individually in the fifth annual test wave. Overall, 14% of the group had dropped out of school prior to completing grade 11. The clusters of males and females most vulnerable to early school dropout were characterized in grade 7 by high levels of aggressiveness and low levels of academic performance (82% early dropout in males; 47% early dropout in females). In seventh grade, subjects who subsequently dropped out tended to affiliate with persons who were also at risk for dropout. Socioeconomic status, race, and early parenthood were also associated with school dropout. The primary outcomes were supported by convergent variable-oriented and person-oriented analyses. Some developmental dynamics of the phenomena are discussed.

Early school dropout: configurations and determinants.

"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide

Though critically important for children's long-term well being, the beginning school transition generally has been neglected by sociologists interested in issues of schooling and social inequality. This chapter examines early school from an educational stratification perspective. Life-stage and developmental considerations heighten young children's sensitivity to school influences generally, while pressures associated with social role transitions (i.e. from “home child” to “school child”) challenge them. We review how out-of-school social structural influences associated with poverty, ethnicity, and family type complicate early school adjustment. Reviewed too are various structural arrangements in the social organization of early schooling (e.g. access to preschools, the restricted socioeconomic variability of elementary schools, and various kinds of educational “tracking”) that can either reinforce or offset out-of-school influences. We conclude with a call for more work on mechanisms of educational str...

Entry Into School: The Beginning School Transition and Educational Stratification in the United States

This paper considers the potential impact of the recent recommendations for raising standards in American schools on a population at risk, that is, those students likely to leave school prior to high school graduation. The paper proceeds by (1) presenting a systematic review of the empirical evidence on factors that predict dropping out, (2) synthesizing and explicating the recent recommendations for raising standards in American schools, (3) considering the likely positive and negative effects of higher standards on the population at risk in the absence of any other changes in the structure of schools, (4) identifying the school characteristics that can be altered to minimize the adverse effects of changes in academic standards on potential dropouts, and (5) proposing recommendations to raise academic standards and mitigate the dropout problem simultaneously.

A Population at Risk: Potential Consequences of Tougher School Standards for Student Dropouts

Terrorism is only marginally more welcome on the agenda of the United Nations than it is in our cities and neighborhoods. Diplomats and international civil servants, much like the rest of us, understand that they must address terrorism. But they, too, wish it would go away or that someone else would take care of it. No one really knows what motivates others to undertake vicious and seemingly random attacks on innocent civilians, nor have any particularly novel or effective means of deterring or preventing such acts appeared. Though the world body took steps to ratchet up both its normative and operational opposition to terrorism in the 1990s and again after the attacks on the United States of 9/11, it remains much more of a bit player on the former than the latter. This paper asks why this is so, and whether there are grounds to expect the UN to evolve into a more enthusiastic, well-rounded, and central participant in counterterrorism efforts in the future.

Edward C. Luck

Papers

Another Reluctant Belligerent: The United Nations and the War on Terrorism

A Road to Nowhere

The Individual Responsibility to Protect

Stayin' Alive: The Rumors of the UN's Death Have Been Exaggerated

Cultural Genocide and the Protection of Cultural Heritage