17 

 professions represented an advance of sorts in achieving a functional reso- 

 lution of the authority issue, but in no sense a final one. 



One of the authors was witness to an episode which illustrates 

 this dilemma and sharpens the issues at stake. The organization concerned 

 was a small technological institute affiliated with a large government uni- 

 versity, but this is beside the point. The institute had a young, well- 

 prepared and highly-motivated staff which was attempting to develop a coopera- 

 tive program with a U.S. university. The issue at stake was what might con- 

 stitute a legitimate problem for joint research. The representatives of 

 the U.S. institution had proposed a project that had important theoretical 

 significance. As individuals, the local people were attracted to the idea. 

 It would have made possible the utilization of their special competencies 

 and have given them visibility in the international science community. 

 Moreover, the importance of the work and the opportunity for association with 

 a respected U.S. school would have projected their institute as an important 

 technical resource, and this projection would have strengthened their rela- 

 tions with the local industrial and professional community. The only thing 

 that chilled their enthusiasm was that it might not meet the test of being 

 in the "national interest" in the sense in which that term was locally used. 



A widely-held value in the underdeveloped world that individual 

 professional enthusiasm must always be subordinated to a loosely-defined 

 concept of the "national interest" requires further consideration. Perhaps 

 no value has aborted so many promising starts, driven so much competent young 

 talent to emigration, and made a mockery out of the claim that it is a 

 shortage of trained personnel that is braking economic development. The 

 application of this value may be basically a device by which the power elements 



