1044 



34 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



This category will not be considered in detail in this paper as it is 

 largely outside the focus of cooperation among OECD countries. 



POLICY MANAGEMENT ISSUES 



A number of policy management issues arise in the government's 

 sponsorship of international cooperative activities in the first two cat- 

 egories that have become serious disincentives to elective program de- 

 velopment. We can take up the categories in turn. 



International Cooperation Directly Supporting U.S. "Domestic" 

 R&D Objectives 



This category of activities poses the least difficult conceptual man- 

 agement issues within the government, since the programs presum- 

 ably must and in principle can compete for funds within agency bud- 

 gets and objectives. Criteria are clear, or at least no less clear than for 

 R&D in general, and it is evident what programs new proposals are to 

 be compared against. 



But there are important policy process issues here that serve to cre- 

 ate major barriers to active development of international cooperation. 

 These have to do with the detailed processes by which projects are 

 proposed and funded, and the general encouragement (or lack of it) of 

 an international perspective in government R&D programs. The two 

 are related. 



The dominant domestic orientation of the American R&D enter- 

 prise is often a surprise not only to scientists in other countries, but 

 also to Americans used to the view that science is basically an interna- 

 tional enterprise. Though science is nonnational in its substance, na- 

 tions do support science and technology for national purposes, and 

 the institutions of government providing support are necessarily ori- 

 ented to national goals. In the United States, the development of gov- 

 ernmental institutions has historical, cultural, geographic, and politi- 

 cal roots that result in a policy process that weights domestic interests 

 and concerns to a much greater extent than is prevalent in most other 

 countries. The separation of powers between the executive branch and 

 the Congress is a major factor in continuing this dominance of domes- 

 tic interests. Moreover, the very scale of science and technology in the 

 United States, coupled with the geographic isolation of the country, 

 has tended to make scientists and engineers as a whole less knowledge- 

 able about and less interested in what is happening outside the country. 



