Peter Federman

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/25248

State-Level Executive Orders on COVID-19 in the United States

Dr. Peter Federman's current research on COVID-19 with his co-investigator Cali Curley (University of Miami) involves collecting, coding and analyzing the language in thousands of executive orders issued across the United States since February 2020 that directly address the ongoing pandemic. With their team of graduate students, they are developing a unique dataset that captures not only the existence of these orders, but the nuance and language contained within them. Currently, he and his team have presented their work to practitioners at the Oklahoma Department of Health, the Office of the Governor of Oklahoma, and in venues sponsored by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. Dr. Federman and his team have also published their work in multiple leading public administration journals and well-read policy blogs, with several further articles in progress or under review. The research is evidence-based because all of the findings are developed directly from issued orders codified into law across all 50 states, and brings together data collected on social distancing, testing rates, infection rates, spread rates, and other elements to provide a cross-disciplinary understanding of how executive power has been wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this research project is to develop a public-facing dashboard that will provide insight into this ongoing work, as well as serve as an informational hub for policymakers, practitioners, and academics to work with data for both academic research and evidence-based policymaking.

Dr. Federman's utilization of qualitative techniques including process tracing and institutional grammar to highlight decision-making practices and policy priorities across the United States is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty are TRANSLATING their RESEACH INTO PRACTICE.

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Exploring Intra-State Tensions in Government Responses to COVID-19
(Oxford Academic, 2022-05-13) Federman, Peter; Curley, Cali
Research and attention to federalism has vastly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While political polarization has largely been used as a scapegoat to explain the U.S. policy response to the pandemic, federalism has also been credited and blamed for the policy response and has played an important role in providing avenues for conflict. This article explores intra-state conflict stemming from COVID-19. We utilize ten exploratory cases to identify three distinct but interrelated patterns of conflict that emerged within U.S. states, focusing on tensions between the executive and legislative branches, between bureaucratic officials and the legislature, and between state and local governments. We then examine a series of questions regarding the implication of these conflicts, focusing on the issuance of executive orders, the responses undertaken by officials who disagreed with and sought to push back against these orders, and the ways that inter-branch and inter-governmental disagreements about these orders were resolved.
Comparing Motivations for Including Enforcement in US COVID-19 State Executive Orders
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-04-21) Curley, Cali; Harrison, Nicky; Federman, Peter Stanley
The United States’ response to COVID-19 has been predominantly led by state governments. To understand if, why, and how state governments include enforcement language in their executive order response, this article conducts an analysis based on 1,357 coded executive orders. It is found that decisions to include enforcement language are influenced by a governor’s political circumstances and perceived risks associated with the crisis. This paper offers insight into how these findings are important for future research and an explanation of the distinct ways that US state governments are choosing to address COVID-19.
Police Performance As Symbolic Politics? Public Recognition and the Value of Awards
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Federman, Peter Stanley; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
What constitutes “good” performance in a law enforcement agency, who decides, and how does public recognition of that performance change how an agency performs? This study uses a quasi-experimental design and propensity-score matching model to assess the impact of a law enforcement agency’s status as a finalist for the annual Cisco/International Chiefs of Police Association (IACP) Community Policing Award on performance in future years, as measured by crime clearance rates. It is found that after comparing the treated group (finalist agencies) with the untreated group (non-finalist nearest-neighbor agencies), there is no meaningful difference in crime clearance rates. This unexpected finding establishes that the public recognition of finalist status by the Department of Justice, which promotes finalist agencies as exemplars of best practices in community policing, does not impact the subsequent performance of those agencies. Additionally, the results of the model suggest that the impact of symbolic politics and social construction on the award finalist selection process and the choice by DOJ to promote the practices of those agencies should be explored. Questions are also raised as to the utility of crime clearance rates as a performance measure, and future avenues for research in each area are proposed.
State Executive Orders: Nuance in restrictions, revealing suspensions, and decisions to enforce
(Wiley, 2020-05-30) Curley, Cali; Federman, Peter; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
In the absence of a large-scale federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local elected officials have enacted executive orders that include both restrictions to public liberties as well as the suspension of rules and regulations. While these restrictive policy actions have received extensive media attention, the suspensions, including regulatory rollbacks, waivers, and extensions are lesser known. This viewpoint offers insight from a working database that captures the nuance and variation across restrictions, suspensions, and enforcement mechanisms being utilized, at the state level.

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