780 



states, and particularly in the U.S. That is, the decisions about support for 

 R&D, the determination of objectives, the setting within which budgets are 

 considered, the allocations among competing fields or issues, are all taken in 

 a national framework. By itself, that is not surprising since national 

 governments are the dominant source of funding for R&D. This means, however, 

 that international or global needs are not likely to be adequately reflected 

 on the basis of national consideration alone. 



This phenomenon is not peculiar to science and technology. A natural 

 result of the nation/state basis of the international system is that 

 decisions, even life and death decisions affecting people in other countries, 

 are often made unilaterally within one nation. Moreover, the apparent 

 worldwide intensification of nationalism in the face of economic difficulty, 

 not least in the U.S., further emphasizes this situation. 



However, with regard to science and technology, the parochial nature of 

 the process goes beyond normal constraints of nation-based decision-making and 

 funding. The decentralized nature of public funding for R&D means that R&D is 

 predominantly considered within the context of mission agency budgets. Even 

 for those agencies whose rationale has a basic foreign policy motivation (DOD, 

 DOE), the actual decisions and choices are heavily influenced by domestic 

 pressures and inputs. Some departments or agencies are in fact precluded by 

 their legislative charter from committing resources for anything other than 

 "domestic" problems. All are faced with a budget process in both the 

 Executive and Legislative branches that discourages (usually denies) all 

 departments except foreign policy agencies the right to allocate their own R&D 

 funds for other than U.S. -defined problems. 



