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U.S. GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION AND POLICY PROCESS 37 



Aside from the difficulties inherent in obtaining funding, other fac- 

 tors serve as disincentives. The time delays necessarily involved; the 

 extra travel, language, and cultural obstacles to intimate interaction; 

 and the different national patterns of allocation of research funds 

 (which can result, for example, in disparities of funding and uncer- 

 tainties of the results of priority ranking) also are important. More- 

 over, scientists are not immune from national biases, notwithstanding 

 the nonnational basis of scientific knowledge. Particularly in the 

 United States, many scientists think little and know less about the de- 

 tails of work in other countries and have little interest in international 

 cooperation. Others view international cooperation as inimical to the 

 competitive race for national prestige and preeminence and are little 

 inclined to collaborate unless absolutely necessary. 



And, of course, the growing national concern with the possible eco- 

 nomic and security costs of transfer of technology has served to put a 

 further damper on official interest in international cooperation. 

 Though that does not affect many scientific fields, it certainly is rele- 

 vant to those, such as electronics and biotechnology, in which the dis- 

 tance between the laboratory and production is shrinking. The con- 

 cern, still largely focused on security, will almost certainly turn 

 increasingly to economic issues. Growing pressures for "technological 

 protectionism" cannot help but prove to be a deterrent to interna- 

 tional scientific cooperation. 



Thus, impediments and disincentives, even for projects entirely jus- 

 tified scientifically, can be substantial. These arise from the general 

 domestic orientation of the U.S. government and a policy and funding 

 process that provides little recognition of the special requirements for 

 organizing and implementing international cooperative projects. Not 

 all possible international projects should be supported, of course, but 

 the growing importance of such cooperation to the United States, as 

 well as to others, dictates greater efforts to modify the existing climate, 

 and to make the governmental process more flexible and responsive. 



International Science and Technology Cooperation Carried Out 

 for Mixed Foreign Policy and Scientific Purposes 



Though seemingly less relevant to cooperation among OECD coun- 

 tries, it is nevertheless true that some cooperative programs do (and 

 should) have motivations that go beyond purely scientific purposes. 

 The United States has umbrella agreements for cooperation with Ja- 

 pan and France and other nonspecific agreements in various deline- 

 ated fields, for example, or those with particular departments in other 



