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U.S. GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION AND POLICY PROCESS 31 



lively little attention or analysis. That is the organization of the U.S. 

 government for policymaking and funding of international coopera- 

 tion in science and technology. In fact, the particular structure of the 

 U.S. government and the government's budgetary process have a 

 great deal to do with the difficulty of expanding such programs even 

 under supportive administrations and much to do with the ease of cut- 

 ting them back in antagonistic or disinterested administrations. The 

 lack of clear understanding of this aspect of the subject, though by no 

 means the only critical element, nevertheless can frustrate efforts to 

 build international cooperation even when the political will exists to 

 do so. And it certainly goes a long way to explain why more projects 

 and possibilities for international cooperation do not arise spontane- 

 ously, whatever the interest of a particular administration. 



Astonishing as it may be, the U.S. government has no clear govern- 

 mental instrument for international cooperation, and in fact some 

 agencies are legally barred from using appropriated funds for other 

 than "domestic" R&D objectives. Individual departments and agen- 

 cies must carry out their own programs of cooperation as part of regu- 

 lar budgets, with little or no recognition of the problems and disincen- 

 tives thus created. Difficult as it is for cooperation on projects of clear 

 scientific merit and interest, proposals with mixed scientific and politi- 

 cal objectives have no natural home or funding resource. We will at- 

 tempt to explore and explain this situation. 



THE ISSUE 



The U.S. government's purpose in supporting international cooper- 

 ation in science and technology is exactly the same as that for support- 

 ing science and technology more generally (or of any other federal ac- 

 tivity, for that matter): to contribute to the nation's domestic and 

 international goals. These goals have to be translated into specific pol- 

 icies, of course, and, in practice, into concrete programs and budgets. 

 From the perspective of the government bureaucracy, this process 

 now becomes a policy management issue: how best to formulate pro- 

 grams, compare them with each other in relation to the national pur- 

 poses they are to serve, budget for them appropriately, and ensure 

 effective implementation and evaluation. These necessary manage- 

 ment objectives turn out, given present structure and practices, to dis- 

 courage proposals for international cooperation, or to bias the system 

 against them once proposed. Ironically, we are denying ourselves sub- 

 stantial use of science and technology in the service of national inter- 



