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Responsiveness in Local Politics: A Comparative Analysis of School Boards.
Responsiveness in Local Politics: A Comparative Analysis of School Boards.
- Publication Year :
- 1977
-
Abstract
- This paper applies the Eulau and Karps framework for explaining the responsiveness of legislative bodies to public school boards. Eulau and Karps argue that responsiveness deals with a complex, multidimensional set of transactional relationships that can be analytically divided into four components. A high level of responsiveness in one component can go together with unresponsiveness in another. Prototype empirical indexes for the components of responsiveness are presented to investigate both the general level of school board responsiveness and the relationships between components of responsiveness. Since school boards are fundamentally different from other governmental legislative bodies, a brief consideration of their role in school governance provides background and context for the indexes of responsiveness. To the four components of responsiveness outlined by Eulau and Karps--policy, service, public goods, and symbolic responsiveness--is added a fifth, responsiveness as public influence on legislators' attitudes and behavior. Four foci are used in examining these components--the content of communication, the source of communication, the source of response, and the content of response. Individual boards are inconsistently responsive across components, components are independent of each other, and operational measures within components are independent of each other. (Author/IRT)
Details
- Database :
- ERIC
- Notes :
- Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New York, N.Y., April 4-8, 1977)
- Publication Type :
- Conference
- Accession number :
- ED137990
- Document Type :
- Speeches/Meeting Papers