The purpose of this research was to determine the extent to which American school board members faced electoral competition, as well as the factors influencing the likelihood of competition.,The authors utilized original national survey data of American school board members linked with school district demographic data obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics. Several hypotheses were tested using three state-level fixed-effects logistic regression models predicting electoral competition.,The authors found that 39.6% of American school board members reported not having an opponent in their most recent election. School board members serving larger urban school districts with higher percentages of special needs students and racial minorities were more likely to have faced electoral competition.,The authors highlighted potential flaws in the traditional model of local democratic governance and helped expand understanding of the dissatisfaction theory of American democracy and continuous participation theory. The authors concluded with several suggestions on how the results can be used to inform future local governance reforms that increase electoral competition and/or create more effective governance models.

中文翻译：

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毫无争议：美国学校董事会选举中的选举竞争

这项研究的目的是确定美国学校董事会成员面对选举竞争的程度，以及影响竞争可能性的因素。作者利用美国国家学校董事会成员的原始国家调查数据与学区人口统计数据联系起来从国家教育统计中心获得。使用三个预测选举竞争的州级固定效应逻辑回归模型检验了几种假设。作者发现，美国学校董事会成员中有39.6％的人报告说在最近的选举中没有对手。在较大的城市学区服务的校董会，有特殊需要的学生和种族少数群体的比例较高，他们更有可能面临选举竞争。作者强调了传统的地方民主治理模式中的潜在缺陷，并帮助扩大了对美国民主和连续参与理论的不满理论的理解。作者就如何将结果用于未来的地方治理改革提供了一些建议，这些改革将增加选举竞争和/或创建更有效的治理模型。