The FDA is responsible for ensuring the safety of foods, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, and a variety of other products. These products account for 25 cents of every dollar US consumers spend. Under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, FDA is responsible for ensuring that these products are safe, accurately labelled, and in the case of drugs and medical devices, effective. FDA's tasks include: enforcement, pre-market product evaluation and approval, post-market surveillance and investigations, publishing of regulations, conducting and monitoring of research, public education, and regulating products and processes to prevent hazards to human health. Contents: Preface; Food and Drug Administration: Selected Funding Data; Food and Drug Administration: Selected Funding and Policy Issues; US European Agricultural Trade: Food and Biotechnology Issues; Food and Drug Administration: Selected Funding and Policy Issues; Food and Drug Administration Modernisation Act of 1997 -- The Provisions; Index.

The main focus of downsizing has shifted from the private to the public sector. The cutbacks began in the Department of Defense. Now the goal is a federal civilian workforce reduction of 12 percent by the year 2000. This pioneering study looks at the management of workforce reductions in the public sector both in theory and in practice. Three case studies -- of the Defense Logistics Agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Food and Drug Administration -- illustrate the organizational, managerial, and human dimensions of attempting to improve performance with reduced resources. The author draws on extensive interviews with senior executives and middle managers in the three agencies; at the General Accounting Office, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Performance Review; the Senior Executives Association and the Federal Managers Association; and scholars and researchers. In a larger sense, this work pushes the boundaries of knowledge concerning organizational change and makes a significant contribution to organization theory. It offers important new insights not only for public sector managers but for organization theorists and management specialists whose work on downsizing has been presumed but not shown to be applicable to the public sector.

Policymaking in large bureaucracies is hardly a simple process. Even the most respected policymakers have to contend with obstacles that seemingly have little to do with the issue at hand--office politics, work structure, and shifting political environments. Yet learning to manage such complex environments is necessary for good policymaking. In Living the Policy Process, Philip Heymann outlines the complex thought processes of policymakers as they struggle to influence both foreign and domestic policy decisions from within the United States government bureaucracy. Focusing on three critical situations to illuminate the politics of policy choice-the successful attempt to sell missiles to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s; the Iran-Contra scandal; and the FDA's attempt to regulate smoking as well as the efforts to do the same by an outside lobbyist-Heymann dissects the intuitive yet rigorous framework that highly skilled policymakers follow to influence government outcomes. Throughout, he offers detailed accounts of the policy process at work in the Reagan, first Bush, and Clinton administrations, from the cabinet level down to the middle tiers of the federal bureaucracy. Heymann deftly describes the shifting real-world conditions that government officials face as they struggle to shape the policy agenda. Ultimately, Living the Policy Process offers a clear, incisive look at the complex considerations involved from all perspectives, with concrete examples, and enriches the understanding of the overall policy process for students, scholars, and practitioners.