Administrative Designs and Access to Political Arenas in Public Education

Abstract

What administrative and political features render spaces of political action publicly accessible? Drawing on Schattschneider's core elements of visibility and scope, we offer a framework to identify administrative features that are crucial to democratic accessibility and apply this framework to American public school board meetings. We analyze online access to school board meeting information through original data retrieved from more than 11,000 U.S. school districts. We find that the availability of information about school board meetings systematically varies across districts' administrative, geographic, and political attributes. Through comparative case studies of four school districts from 2019 to 2022, our analysis identifies ways administrative procedures further shape venue access and how group mobilization can facilitate greater access in the context of onerous administrative procedures. Our results elucidate how public access to policymaking venues depends on governmental and group investments: both state and civil society contribute to a venue's democracy.