Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan

“ 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

"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

" (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