The Longue Durée of School Governance in Boston

This article develops a longue durée study of Boston school governance based on the concept of strands of institutional development. The study identifies two strands of political development—rationalizing and democratic—that have operated on distinctly different logics in the formation and reformation of school governing arrangements. To explain institutional change in school governance, I adopt a conceptual framework that integrates structural (economic, social, and political context) and agency (local political actors) levels of analysis. This inquiry into political development conceives of governing institutions as instruments of collective problem solving, whose form and function are the product of the interactions between the urban environment and local political actors