When Democracy Disappears: Emergency Management in Benton Harbor

Abstract

In this case study, I look at Benton Harbor, Michigan's tenure under a state-appointed emergency manager, with extensive local powers replacing all local elected government, and a single imperative to balance the city's budget. The law, ostensibly race-neutral, wound up targeting almost all of Michigan's cities with significant Black population. The law ultimately disenfranchised half the state's Black population but only two percent of Whites. This law invalidates a basic civil right and prerequisite for urban political theory: Electoral democracy. Who holds power in the urban regime when the state takes over? Drawing on forty-four interviews, observations and archival research, I argue a White urban regime governs without elected representation in this majority-Black city. The ideological framing of emergency management as neutral, and Black politics as corrupt or self-interested, provides the logic to blame Black governance for structural disinvestment and White-led extraction.