Implementing presidential particularism: bureaucracy and the distribution of federal grants

Do agencies implement the president's particularistic goals uniformly? This paper clarifies the presidential particularism literature by explicitly considering the mechanism through which the president pursues their policy goals: executive agencies. The constellation of bureaucratic agencies responsible for allocating grants plays a key role in facilitating or frustrating presidential policy priorities. Using a dataset of 21 agencies over 14 years, I find that only agencies ideologically proximate to the president engage in particularism benefiting the president. I find no evidence that politicization influences agency implementation of particularism. Critically, the moderating effect of the bureaucracy on particularism only occurs for distributive programs over which agencies have discretion. When disbursing formula grants written by Congress but administered by the bureaucracy with little or no discretion, ideological distance between agencies and presidents has no effect on particularism.

After Trump: Restoring Legitimacy to the Pardon Power

The guest editor’s introduction aims to provide an overview of Donald Trump’s extraordinary record of pardoning, and a road map to the essays in the Issue. Together the essays discuss ways to restore legitimacy to the pardon power and increase its usefulness to the presidency, by limiting some of the pardon power’s most extreme uses; supplementing the pardon power with statutory remedies so that the president is no longer personally responsible for so much routine criminal justice business; and managing the pardon power in a way that serves the presidency and not the parochial interests of federal prosecutors. All of these ideas and arguments together suggest that the way to restoring pardon’s democratic legitimacy and usefulness to the president lies in shrinking the portfolio of routine chores for which pardon is now exclusively responsible, and in restoring the independence and stature of the pardon advisory process within the Justice Department. It would be both fitting and deeply ironic if Donald Trump’s irregular and undemocratic pardoning led to a more coherent and meaningful use of the constitutional power in the service of an enlightened presidential policy agenda, to a renewed commitment to the historically close relationship between pardon and the justice system, and even to a transformation of the Justice Department’s unforgiving prosecutorial culture.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR): Disambiguated in the Telemedicine / Telehealth Sphere

The world is navigating through unfamiliar and incomprehensible times – COVID-19, international economic crisis, and crumbling healthcare systems. The United States (US) healthcare industry is grappling with an increased workload and advancing digitization technological concerns. The failure of organizations to offer suitable cybersecurity controls within the critical infrastructure leads to advanced persistent threat (APT) that could have incapacitating effects on organizations. A keen understanding of cybersecurity is vital for leaders and the need is referenced in US policy that advances a national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure. Akin to the Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21 Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, leaders’ goals should be to reduce vulnerabilities, identify and disrupt threats, minimize consequences and hasten response and recovery efforts related to critical infrastructure. To address the concern, it is necessary to review how AI and AR serve as co-technologies to support security of patient care and monitoring, examine impacts on individuals’ and overall healthcare organizations, address how enhanced comprehension of AI and AR could guide medical professional leaders’ decisions and boost the overall patient experience. Therefore, this literature review examines AI and AR connections to cybersecurity for the healthcare environment.

CONCEPTUAL REVIEW OF THE UNITED STATES CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECTURE: POLICY, LAW AND ADMINISTRATION

The United States` Critical Infrastructure System (CIs) represents an umbrella concept grouping all those resources that are essential for national economic, financial, and social system. These critical infrastructures are vital and without them, or with any damages to them, would cripple the nation, states, and/or local communities and tribes. Based on a systematic review approach (methodology), this paper aims to review the United States’ Critical Infrastructure Protection System (USCIPS) at tree aspects. In section one, the policy pillars of USCIPS are outlined based on studding Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21) and National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP). Section two discusses the interdependent nature of the sixteen critical infrastructure sectors and identified the further designation of life-line sectors. Final sector introduces USCIPS stakeholders, collaboration and partnership across between the private sector and public sector stakeholders.

Presidential entrepreneurship and policy change: The case of the telecommunications reform in Mexico (1990 – 2015)

This article studies presidential policy change by using the agenda-setting theory of Kingdon (1984) and Baumgartner and Jones (1993). It focuses on studying the reform of the telecommunications sector in Mexico from the administrations of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988 – 1994) to Enrique Peña Nieto (2012 – 2018). The process of creating a common understanding of the problem and its solutions contribute to generating policy change. It considers that the president is an actor that takes an active role in policymaking. This analysis uses a most-similar comparative approach. The analysis shows that policy changes are sensitive to presidential policy entrepreneurship.