Political Pressure and Decentralization in Institutional Organizations: The Case of School Districts.

This article examines the effect of external political pressure on the distribution of influence in school districts. It is specifically concerned with the influence exercised by school-level administrators and teachers on school-level policy. School districts are viewed as institutional organizations. However, differences across school districts in influence patterns cannot be easily explained with standard institutional theories that stress common patterns of structure across organizations. A theory of local variation across institutional organizations, relating external political pressure and centralization, is developed and assessed empirically using data from High School and Beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]