Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA. By Daniel Carpenter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 856p. $78.50 cloth, $35.00 paper.

Abstract

Dan Carpenter's massive new study of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a definitive study of regulatory politics and administrative behavior destined to stand alongside other classic studies of administrative agencies, such as Herbert Kaufman's The Forest Ranger (1960) or Martha Derthick's Policy Making for Social Security (1979). Like Carpenter's earlier work, Reputation and Power is marked by deep erudition, thorough scholarship, painstaking attention to detail, and a wide-ranging attention to alternative disciplinary paradigms. And it is argued with great craft, subtlety, and creativity both in developing its historical narrative and in its cogent theoretical analysis.