Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan
Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeovers
American Political Science Association Robert A. Dahl Award, 2020
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice, 2020
PB: $32.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-1567-7
Publication: Oct 19
HC: $94.50
EAN: 978-1-4399-1566-0
Publication: Oct 19
Ebook: $32.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-1568-4
Publication: Oct 19
272 pages
5.25 x 8.5
11 tables, 4 figures, 5 halftones, 1 map
The policy history of, implementation of, and reaction to Flint’s municipal takeovers
Read the Introduction (pdf).Description
When the 2011 municipal takeover in Flint, Michigan placed the city under state control, some supported the intervention while others saw it as an affront to democracy. Still others were ambivalent about what was supposed to be a temporary disruption. However, the city’s fiscal emergency soon became a public health emergency—the Flint Water Crisis—that captured international attention.
But how did Flint’s municipal takeovers, which suspended local representational government, alter the local political system? In Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan, Ashley Nickels addresses the ways residents, groups, and organizations were able to participate politically—or not—during the city’s municipal takeovers in 2002 and 2011. She explains how new politics were created as organizations developed, new coalitions emerged and evolved, and people’s understanding of municipal takeovers changed.
In walking readers through the policy history of, implementation of, and reaction to Flint’s two municipal takeovers, Nickels highlights how the ostensibly apolitical policy is, in fact, highly political.
Reviews
“ This book is so much more than a riveting study of the Flint, Michigan, emergency takeover and water crisis. It’s also a study of authoritarian politics masquerading as emergency management. It’s a study of why ‘technical’ and ‘managerial’ problems are always political and why ‘temporary’ solutions always create enduring changes. Nickels makes Flint a lab experiment in emergency powers with tremendous relevance to the nation at large.”—Deborah Stone, Professor Emerita, Brandeis University
“ A perceptive case study of the fraught municipal-state politics that ‘poisoned’ a city, Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan keenly uncovers and illuminates the civic damage that can occur when states disempower cities and disregard local democracy via ‘emergency management.’ Derived from in-depth process tracing and careful field research, Nickels’s findings, implications, and recommendations deserve the attention of scholars studying or concerned about the (mis)use of state government to control the affairs of cities in the twenty-first century.”—Michael Leo Owens, Emory University, author of God and Government in the Ghetto: The Politics of Church-State Collaboration in Black America
“ In this fine-grained account of municipal takeover in Flint, Ashley Nickels elucidates the implicit politics of ostensibly apolitical, managerial approaches to governance and highlights how state agendas interact with local power dynamics to advance elite interests. Nickels’s account is also admirably sensitive to the role community activists have played in challenging municipal takeover and fighting to keep democracy alive. Anyone interested in Flint’s recent history and the predicament of struggling municipalities within the American federal system would do well to read this book.”—Benjamin Pauli, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Kettering University and author of Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis
" (A) timely examination.... Nickels (does) an excellent job of revealing the political nature of municipal takeovers and how problems posed as technical or managerial are political. She also engages the voices and perspectives of not just public administrators, but also the citizens and activists impacted. This work is a model for other public administration scholars who must do better to consider the context and paradoxes of problems caused by political, social, economic, racist, or other structures."
—Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs
—Communication Booknotes Quarterly
"The book is worthwhile reading and will serve undergraduate and graduate public policy classes well, as illustrative readings showing how prominent policy theories can be applied. Nickels adds importantly to the small literature examining how policy feedback affects democracy and participation.... When environmental and water utility agencies’ science is falsely branded as biased or irrelevant, democratic policy making becomes more remote. Nickels’s book is an important reminder of why these issues matter."
— Perspectives on Politics
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction • The Politics of Municipal Takeovers: Power, Participation, and Protest
1. Why Cities Go Broke and Flint’s Financial Collapse
2. Saving Cities from Themselves: How States Respond to Urban Fiscal Crises
3. The Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeover: How the Policy Creates Politics
4. Contextualizing the Flint Case: Race, Class, and Contentious Politics
5. The “Development Agenda”: Implementing Municipal Takeover in Flint
6. From Development Agenda to Development Regime: Allocating Benefits and Burdens and Interpreting Winners and Losers
7. Defending Democracy: Responding to the Municipal Takeover
8. From Fiscal Emergency to Public Health Emergency: Differing Responses to the Flint Water Crisis • Co-authored with Amanda D. Clark
Conclusion • Summary Findings, Implications, and Recommendations
Appendix 1 • Research Design and Methodology
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Notes
References
Index
About the Author(s)
Subjects
1900 N. 13th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
