My research examines the relationship between race and democracy in American cities, with a central focus on school takeover policies in Michigan. I use archival methods, process tracing, interviews, and legislative analysis to study how democratic governance is dismantled and restructured—and the consequences of those changes for Black communities.
Current Book Project
Democracy Under Takeover: Race, Citizenship, and the Politics of Failure
My book project, Democracy Under Takeover: Race, Citizenship, and the Politics of Failure, examines how the state of Michigan used takeover policies to dismantle democratic governance in Detroit’s public school system—and what that dismantling reveals about the relationship between race and democracy in the contemporary United States.
The project argues that state takeovers of Black-led school districts are not simply responses to educational or fiscal failure—they are produced through a structured political process I call the politics of failure: a sequence in which governing challenges are selectively constructed as crises, deliberative channels are foreclosed, and governing authority is transferred from locally elected officials to state-appointed managers. Through systematic analysis of legislative records, archival materials, court filings, and public opinion data spanning more than three decades of Michigan education policy, I trace each step of this process in detail.
At the center of the project is an argument about citizenship. When the politics of failure operates regularly across Black-led school and urban regimes—as it has in Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, Flint, Camden, and beyond—the cumulative effect is what I call conditional citizenship: a pattern in which the right to local democratic self-governance is contingent rather than presumptive for racialized communities. Detroit is the book’s primary case, analyzed through process tracing as a typical case; comparative narratives extend the argument across a wider population of cities and states.
The project contributes to scholarship on racial politics, American political development, and democratic theory, and speaks to ongoing debates about the relationship between race, local governance, and citizenship in the United States.
Beyond the book, my research extends in two directions. First, I am pursuing comparative analysis of how the politics of failure operates across state takeover regimes and municipal receivership structures in cities including Newark, Camden, New Orleans, and Flint—examining the conditions under which Black-led governing regimes become vulnerable (or not) to displacement. Second, I am exploring how grassroots actors, community organizations, and displaced officials in these cities developed independent analytical frameworks for understanding privatization and dispossession, positioning affected communities as political theorists and activists rather than merely as targets of policy.
Journal Articles
Rice, A. (2021). “Political Economy and the Tradition of Radical Black Study.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 22(1), 44–55.
Rice, A. & Mays, K. (2020). “The Boondocks, Black History, and Black Lives Matter: Or, Why Black Popular Culture Matters for Black Millennials.” The Popular Culture Studies Journal, 8(2), 49–67.
Rice, A. & Rice, P. (2015). “Two Brothers Reflect on ‘Spirit of Detroit.’” Text and Performance Quarterly, 35(1), 83–86.
Under Review
Rice, A. “Converting Accountability: Race, Agenda Setting, and the Production of School Failure.” Journal of Public Policy. (Revise & Resubmit, April 2026).
Book Reviews
Rice, A. (2024). Review of Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans. Perspectives on Politics.
Rice, A. (2021). Review of Black Landscapes Matter. Journal of Cultural Geography, 38(3), 434–435.
Selected Presentations
Rice, AJ (2026, November). “Frontlash as Infrastructure: The Racial Origins of Education Reform and the Production of Democratic Vulnerability.” Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Atlanta, GA. (Forthcoming)
Rice, AJ (2025, October). Race, Class and Politics in Detroit. [Invited Lecture]. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.
Rice, AJ (2025, May). "Tracing the Takeover: Race, Discourse, and the Politics of Education Reform." Consortium on the American Political Economy (CAPE) Summer Academy, Berkeley, CA.
Rice, AJ (2024, March 13–16). "Author Meets Critics: Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States." [Roundtable Panelist]. Annual Meeting of the National Conference for Black Political Scientists, Los Angeles, CA.
Rice, AJ (2023, August 31 – September 3). "Constructing State Failure: Elite Discourse and the Process of State Takeover." Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, CA.