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U.S. GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION AND POLICY PROCESS 39 



shot endowment for a "binational foundation" is also possible and has 

 been employed in the past, notably in the case of Israel. Each has its 

 advantages and disadvantages. 



Relying on appropriated agency R&D funds when mixed foreign 

 policy and scientific goals are involved has several problems: estab- 

 lishing objective criteria for comparing the foreign policy interest of 

 alternative proposals, determining the weight that should be given to 

 those interests in comparison with scientific goals, providing adequate 

 means for representing those interests in the budget process, and ab- 

 sorbing the implicit reduction in funds available for the domestic ob- 

 jectives of the agency (especially acute if funds must be segregated in 

 advance to protect against later rejection). The programs, however, 

 are more likely, by comparison with processes that involve nontechni- 

 cal offices, to be of high quality since the technical people most knowl- 

 edgeable are those most heavily involved, and the scientific aspects 

 would be evaluated by the normal process. 



Developing a separate line-item budget within agencies adminis- 

 tered by the technical divisions or the international office (or both) 

 avoids the problem of reducing funds for "domestic" R&D objectives 

 (assuming no larger trade-off in the agencies' overall budgets), but 

 raises more starkly the problem of justification of funds and effective 

 program evaluation. This technique can lead to unjustified continua- 

 tion of funding once started simply from the normal inertia of bud- 

 gets, and can reduce the pressure for scientific justification since the 

 funds are not subject to as rigorous scientific competition. In addition, 

 the international offices, if they administer the funds, may develop a 

 vested interest in the programs which may not adequately reflect ei- 

 ther overall U.S. foreign policy interests or the scientific opportuni- 

 ties. Line items for programs intended to serve, in part, foreign policy 

 interests raise directly the problem of how funds and programs are 

 compared across agency lines, especially since the normal budget pro- 

 cess within agencies and with the Congress involves many other con- 

 siderations. 



On the other hand, both line items and use of regular R&D funds 

 within agency budgets give the agencies a stake in international activi- 

 ties; force them to have to evaluate, advocate, and defend the pro- 

 grams as their own; require commitment to use of resources for inter- 

 national purposes; and allow the development of permanent staff 

 assignments as opposed simply to carrying out programs as a "ser- 

 vice" to other agencies. 



The alternative of establishing funds in the Department of State to 

 support international scientific and technological activities of the 



