The main thesis of this paper is that the apparent failures of bureaucracies in the new and developing states of Africa, far from being concomitants of dismaying negligence and outright incompetence, are, in fact, glaring manifestations of the dilemma of premature bureaucratization.

It is impossible to speak of bureaucratization in African states without reference to those gradual, often times painful, but sustained and systematic separations of administrative processes from the Royal Households and personal loyalties of the nineteenth century Western Europe consequent upon tremendous societal changes that were occurring at the time. It was a process of injecting rationality and efficiency into administrative activities (Bendix, 1968: 208). This process was accentuated with the advent of the Scientific Management School of Organizational Theory, which appeared early in the twentieth century.

From then onward, the prescriptions for modern administrative organizations have been oriented toward a classical conception of rationality. The scientific management school, led by Frederick W. Taylor (1911), was concerned among other things with the motivations of workers, whereas the administrative management school, led by Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (1937), made organization structure their central theme. Following the examples of these two schools of organizational theory, the literature on organization management has tended to emphasize a high degree of control and efficiency, achieved by means of an elaborate network of impersonal rules and order. Organization men are seen as possessing high instrumental capabilities for goal attainment. In other words, the organization men possess all the relevant information and knowledge as regards causes and effects. This element of perfect knowledge discounts possibilities of errors and uncertainties resulting from the indeterminate environment of the organization. Organizational rules, orders, and structures are both necessary and sufficient conditions for organizational efficiency.

One cannot comprehend the demographic and political maps of contemporary Southern Africa, as well as the cultural-historical dynamics of the region during both the colonial and post-colonial periods, without first studying the changes caused by the Zulu revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and by the accompanying Nguni-Sotho migrations into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and even Tanzania. Among the Nguni who occupied the present Natal province of South Africa, the revolution essentially was a violent counter-elite overthrow of the traditional political system and a transformation of the social order. The revolution was conducted throughout the reigns of five monarchical leaders: Dingiswayo (c. 1800-1818) who laid the foundations; Shaka (1816-1828) who established the Zulu kingdom and ruled at the peak of the revolution; Dingane (1828-1840) who was the first to encounter European encroachment upon Zululand; Mpande (1840-1872) who became a vassal of the Boers and the British; and Cetshwayo (1872-1884) who died in an armed resistance against British colonialism. The prolonged period of revolutionary warfare and the accompanying deprivations, known as the Mfecane among the Nguni and the Difaqane among the Sotho-Tswana, resulted in widespread migrations of peoples in different directions and destinations.

Regionally, the Nguni-Sotho migrations led to militarization, conquest and nation-building, and to the absorption of alien peoples. The whole process resulted in the intermixing, intermarriage and assimilation of peoples of diverse origins, languages, and cultures and gave them an enduring sense of corporate identity.

Radical social scientists and third-world scholars have accused traditional social scientists, especially social anthropologists, of failing to study the colonial milieu in which a majority of its field studies have been conducted (cf. Asad, 1975; Lewis, 1973 for examples). There are notable exceptions to that neglect, examples which partisan radicals fail to cite. Among those exceptions are Morris's (1968) study of Asians in East Africa, Ajayi's (1965) study of missionaries in Nigeria, Beidelman's (1974) call to study up in which he uses a Weberian framework in order to understand expatriates in Africa, and Heussler's (1968) study of the British in Northern Nigeria (cf. also Oberg, 1972; Pitt, 1976; Jones, 1974; Reining, 1966; Salamone, 1974, 1977, and 1978; Savishinsky, 1972; Schapera, 1958; Stavenhagen, 1977; and Tonkinson, 1974 for a few such works).

Still, it remains true that social scientists have tended, by and large, to neglect the study of colonial society. This relative neglect entails both serious theoretical and methodological consequences for the social sciences, for it both narrows the range of societies in its comparative repertoire and masks a source of systematic bias. After all, expatriate societies are but one transform of plural societies, one possible manifestation of deeper underlying structural principles. Unfortunately, as Beidelman (1974: 235-36) correctly indicates, those segments of society closest to the anthropologist did not capture his wonder. Neither were they perceived as fit subjects for analysis.

The psychology of colonialism is a subject which has received mostly speculative treatment in the form of large generalizations derived from suggestive but unsystematic observations. Stimulating as such contributions can be, there is a need for close empirical studies, conducted so far as possible without theoretical bias, of the reactions of European colonialists to those who were being colonized. It will undoubtedly happen that in the course of such detailed studies many easy assumptions will have to be discarded and grand theories dismantled. What follows is offered as a tentative contribution to a more complex appreciation of what went on in the minds of Europeans when they found themselves in intimate contact with an African people.

The subject of this paper is British attitudes toward the Masai as they were expressed in the context of administration. The Masai were chosen because there is a large body of conventional wisdom on the subject of British attitudes toward them which invites critical analysis. Stated crudely, the conventional belief, which has been pressed into service many times to explain why the Masai hardly changed at all during the half century of British rule, is that the British were so charmed by them that they hated to see them enter the twentieth century. A number of social scientists have considered the phenomenon of Masai resistance to change (Merrill, 1960; Gulliver, 1969; Tignor, 1976) and they have all concluded that there are more powerful reasons for it than the attitudes of administrators; but no one has investigated systematically what these attitudes were and how they were related to administrative behavior. It is simply assumed that the Masai were favorites of the British, and the relation of attitudes to action seems to require no further elucidation. A glance at the evidence shows that things were not so simple. A range of attitudes toward the Masai existed among administrators—though the modal response was certainly positive rather than negative—and the relation of attitudes to the policies recommended or pursued was not straightforward. Without making exaggerated claims for the kind of exercise which follows, it can be argued that closer scrutiny is warranted, at the very least to clear away accumulated misconceptions. At this local level, where the human characteristics of administrators stand out against a rather remote background of metropolitan policymaking, a social psychologist can perhaps contribute a useful perspective on the written records and oral traditions of those involved.

The growth and development of an international national parks movement has provided Africa with a powerful impetus for devoting increased attention and funding to the preservation of natural African habitats and the conservation of indigenous floral and faunal stock (Lamprey, 1969; Olindo, 1974; Nelson et al., 1978). The political, social and economic dynamics of independent Africa, however, are providing their own set of counter forces to the establishment and consolidation of integrated national parks systems in a significant number of African countries. Particular threats are posed by the continued intrusion into Africa of western multinational corporation capital and by the failure to wean those national parks which do exist away from their almost exclusive externally directed function (Farvar and Milton, 1972; Dasmann, 1973; De Vos, 1975).

Africa's conservation inheritance from the colonial period was a largely uncoordinated set of game reserves and parks designed to serve the recreational needs and economic interests of expatriate whites, settler communities, and foreign tourists. The mass of Africans invariably had little access either to the reserves and parks themselves or to the private and public decision-making bodies which created and maintained them. Political independence brought a measure of access and potential control, but for the masses the inevitable temptation to regard the reserves as white and foreign playthings of only marginal relevance in the independence milieu has persisted.

The widespread commitment to westernized development paths by African states has, in addition, posed long term threats to environmental conservation and the creation and sustenance of national parks systems. Wildlife preservation is often viewed purely in economic terms, as an important, but ultimately dispensable, adjunct to the foreign tourist industry (Pollock, 1974; Myers, 1975). This attitude is expressed in a number of ways.

In The Age of Uncertainty, John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted Harvard economist, expressed some simple but profound thoughts on power, ideas, vested interests, and the politics of leadership. Galbraith's ideas have significant bearing on the concerns of this essay. First he argued (1977: 11) that “people have an enduring tendency to protect what they have, justify what they want to have. And their tendency is to see as right the ideas that serve such purpose. Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.” Second, he (ibid.: 13) observed that there is a unique relationship between power and income: Power flows unidirectionally from top down. Income (salary or wealth in Nigerian parlance) flows unidirectionally from bottom up. “As power flowed down, income extracted thereby flowed up. It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.” That is, power and influence are the means of making money, of securing favorable allocations of public resources to one's side, to one's group, and for protecting one's vested interests including socioeconomic class interests in any society.

Third, Galbraith (ibid.: 330) sees the essence of leadership as “the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.” Since leadership inevitably involves the power and authority to decide for others, it becomes necessary for leaders to be “equipped with knowledge, self-confidence and self-esteem” (ibid.: 338), in order to make the right and equitably just decisions for the people, all the people. Thus, the problems of public policy, the problems of allocating resources, tax burdens, sacrifices during austere conditions, and in general, the problems of the authoritative allocation of values in an environment of scarcity always involve questions of power, self-interest, and leadership.

As agricultural production shifts from traditional methods (where land and labor are the major inputs and seed often is saved by the farmer) to more modern methods in which more of the inputs are produced off the farm, farmers' savings in Third World countries may be insufficient to purchase the needed inputs for cash. Thus credit may have to be provided from some source. Many governments have established agricultural development banks to increase the lending available to the agricultural sector and have experienced low repayment rates [a good summary is found in Donald (1976); also see World Bank (1975)]. Some writers have suggested that loans be made through cooperatives or a similar political group where selection of the borrowers is made by the group and there is group pressure for repayment. This study examines the experience of loans allocated through this type of arrangement to ujamaa villages in Tanzania and to small private farms in Zambia, and it seeks to establish some correlates of repayment ability.

Tanzania established the Tanzanian Rural Development Bank (TRDB) in 1971 and Zambia the Agricultural Finance Company (AFC) in 1970 to provide increased capital to the agricultural sector. Although both organizations make loans to both large and small farmers, this study concentrated on small farmer experience. In each country these organizations replaced predecessors with poor repayment experience (Due, 1978a). In each country lending procedures were reviewed and a determination made to attain high repayment rates. Training and administration were upgraded.

In this article it shall be argued that the Zambian government's decision to nationalize its only major industry—large international copper companies—undermined the government's major development objectives toward the mining industry. By taking majority ownership of the copper corporations, the government inadvertently modified its original policy objectives and shifted toward the policy objectives of the copper companies. The force behind the government's impetus for change in its policy orientation did not come from Zambian administrators who supposedly became bourgeois, nor did it develop as a result of an increase in the power of the mining companies. Rather the government's participation in the companies institutionally linked governmental policy criteria with the criteria in use by the mining corporations, measured more by profit margins and less by the social criteria of development and public welfare.

Political leaders apparently thought that they could achieve their developmental goals through their control of the copper companies and could thus avoid making major public investments to achieve those goals. Leaders appeared to see the government's ownership of the copper companies as being a relatively cost free way to develop the country. Not only did this prove impossible, however, but when the copper industry experienced a financial crisis after 1975, the government as the major owner had to bear the financial burden of supporting the multinational corporations. One consequence of Zambia's nationalization of the copper industry, therefore, was to place the country deeply into debt simply to sustain the operations of a financially troubled international industry. This had the effect of forcing the government to suspend all major new development projects and to postpone its development plans for the country.

In 1939 Nigeria was divided into three Regions for purely administrative reasons. These regions, to all intents and purposes, did not constitute separate governments. In fact, between 1939 and 1945, these regions had no legislatures of their own. Even under the Richards' Constitution, when they had separate legislatures they had no independent powers. In practice the state legislatures under the Richards' Constitution (1946-1951) were no more than agents of the governor and the central legislature. Between 1951 and 1954, however, glimpses of a federal division of powers began to appear because the regional legislatures had powers to make laws over issues within the boundaries of their regions. More specifically, the regional legislatures exercised such powers in electoral matters. For example, in 1951, the Electoral Regulations for election into the central and regional legislatures were in two parts. The first part was the General Regulations under which the elections were conducted while the second part was the Specific Regulations which laid down the procedure for elections in each region of the country. To a large extent, although the Macpherson Constitution of 1951 was not federal, the Electoral Regulations under that Constitution paid due respect to the varieties in the nation following the tripartite administrative division of 1939. It was not until 1954 that a federal constitution with a clear division of powers and recognized spheres of influence finally came into operation.

The supply of high level manpower, particularly the products of institutions of higher learning, has been concentrated in certain parts of Nigeria due partly to the highly uneven pace of educational development. Due to lack of data on the distribution of the products on Nigerian universities on a state by state basis, the distribution of university students can be used to indicate the disparity in the supply of university graduates. In 1970-71, the distribution of the 14,468 students enrolled in Nigerian universities by state of origin ranged from only 221 or 1.5 percent for the former North-Western State to a high of 5,218 or 36.1 percent for the former Western State. In 1973-74, only 2.7 percent of the 23,228 students enrolled came from the North-Western State, while 29.8 percent came from the Western State (National Universities Commission, 1970-71, 1973-74).

Where there is unfettered labor mobility such uneven supply of manpower would engender geographical mobility with people moving to wherever there are employment opportunities. This, however, has never been so in the Nigerian situation. In the 1950s, there were mass dismissals of workers on the ground that they were not indigenes of the regions where they were working (Yesufu, 1962: 145). All the former regional governments were guilty of extreme regionalism as strict regionalizaton of their respective civil services became a religion to be worshipped with all devotion. Unfortunately, this practice of regional consciousness also spread to the private sector where employers fell in line with government discriminatory employment policies. As Yesufu (1962: 145) aptly summarized, “private employers, particularly the large expatriate firms, have largely adopted this regionalist approach in labor recruitment, in deference to the susceptibilities of the Regional Government who might otherwise withhold important economic concessions.”

At the heart of the development process, insofar as it involves governmental activity, is the attitude of the administrator who is supposed to carry out that policy. An administrator who is not committed to a policy can either simply ignore it, or if the policy seems threatening, actively work to sabotage it. In the final analysis, it is the administrator in the field who must act as the lightning rod in the linking of policy planning in the center to policy implementation in the rural district.

Development policy in Tanzania depends particularly upon the aptitude and the attitude of the district level administrator. Tanzanian socialism, with its emphasis on self help and cooperative effort, must be accepted by civil servants in the districts and regions who may be skeptical of much of the thrust of development policy. Heirs to an elitist administrative tradition, the Tanzanian district officer and his staff may have little financial incentive to implement a policy of egalitarianism which has at least some emphasis on the redistribution of wealth.

This study focuses on the issue of administrative attitudes in an attempt to determine to what extent the administrative and political changes which have occurred in Tanzania have been accepted at the district level. This article will first examine the attitudes of a select group of Tanzanian district level administrators and then compare these attitudes with those of their closest colleagues at the district and at the regional level.

The relative distribution of education is linked with relative social and economic development among nations and inter-regionally within the same country (Denison, 1962). Evidence from comparative studies shows that intra-national variation is usually greater than inter-national variations (Gould, 1971: 82-89) and tends to intensify among lower level political formations (Gould, 1972: 65-74).

Historical evidence indicates that the educational advantages of some regions are derived from proximity to the coast and nodal centres of growth and favorable climatic conditions conducive to missionary activities (McCaskie, 1972: 30-35). Recent studies in Africa have shown that educational development is related to sets of economic variables and modernization processes. Among these are urbanization and trade, migration and European settlement, the development of transportation network (Soja, 1968), the spread of cash crops, and emergence of new occupational structures which constitute the preconditions for the demand and diffusion of education (Foster, 1966; Brownstein, 1972). These social and economic factors, at the regional and subregional levels, exert influences that give rise to variations in enrollment at the different educational levels.

With the growing awareness of the importance of the development of human capital (Becker, 1975; Schultz, 1961: 1-17; Mincer, 1970: 1-26) and the potential political dangers when educational inequalities are linked with ethnic differentials (Diejomaoh, 1972: 318-363), public policy has become an important factor in the determination of regional distribution of education.

This paper attempts to establish the relationship between the varying regional education attainment and quantifiable regional economic, social, and locational characteristics as well as instruments of public policy. The importance of these factors over time, with a view of isolating the most potent in the attainment of the highest educational objectives, will be examined.

In their study of the process of individual modernity in six less developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Inkeles and Smith (1974) reported that urbanization was of little or no consequence as a predictor variable. McClelland (1976: 161) has described this finding as “a shock to some sociologists … who have argued that it is the city above all which makes men modern.” Lerner (1965) and Hoselitz (1962) were among such sociologists who assigned a preeminent position to urbanization among factors accounting for modernization in the less developed countries. Lerner (1965), in particular, argued that in a system of causal indicators, the developmental sequence was from urbanization to literacy to communication and thence to political participation. Support for this conception of the national development process has been reported by McCrone and Cnudde (1967), Akler (1966), Smith (1969), and Sigelman (1971), among others.

Several other researchers have, however, reported, as did Inkeles and Smith (1974), that urbanization no longer holds such an important position in the national development process, if in fact it ever did hold such a position in the past (Schramm and Ruggels, 1967; Golding, 1974; Edeani, 1977) and Lerner (1976) himself has conceded that these empirical challenges to his once influential findings may well be valid. Schramm and Ruggels (1967) argue that the spread of transistor radios, roads, and rapid transportation have eroded any influences which urbanization might have had on the growth of literacy and the mass media as Lerner contended, since the data which formed the basis of Lerner's conclusions were collected as far back as September 1950 when these media and transportation developments in the Third World had not become so important. Golding (1974) states that Lerner's research and others like it disregarded the influences of colonialism, international news and media organizations, and the relationship between traditional communication channels and the new media on the development of the Third World. Also, Edeani (1977) reports that, contrary to Lerner's stand, urbanization is a function of economic development and mass communication development.

The countries of West Africa are currently undergoing massive urbanward migration. The process of growth and development which these countries have experienced in the colonial and post-colonial periods has been characterized by what geographers term the process of areal differentiation. In a spatial sense, employment opportunities and developmental changes have been extremely concentrated in a few areas, especially the cities; the rural areas, which dominate both in terms of population numbers and areal extent, have either undergone little growth or have felt the backwash effects of development elsewhere (Hirshman, 1958; Myrdal, 1957). This pattern has been variously described by geographers in terms of a “core and dependent periphery” (Friedman, 1966), “islands of development” (Hance et al., 1961), and “modernization surfaces” (Gould, 1970; Riddell, 1970; Soja, 1968). The essential geographic characteristic has been a spatial imbalance in both economic and welfare opportunities within these countries; employment and income opportunities, schools, health facilities, and clean piped water all tend to be concentrated in urban places, especially in the dominant primate cities. In this context, people, by moving to urban centers are making very rational decisions in the face of sharp and mounting urban-rural differentials and strongly limited rural opportunities.

The result of this process may be seen in the major cities of the region; everywhere the primate cities are increasing in size at incredible rates, so incredible that employment growth has been far outstripped by the expansion in urban population numbers. The outcome is what a recent issue of New African (October, 1978: 77) has termed “the inexorable rise of the unemployed.”

Anthropologists have long been interested in the sources and consequences of material inequality among African peoples. Societies in which such inequality existed during pre-colonial times have been investigated (cf. Maquet, 1970; Cohen, 1970; Hoben, 1970) but, especially since the close of the colonial era, attention has been directed toward societies originally without significant material wealth differences that have become internally differentiated due to exogenous social and economic forces. Emergent wealth differences have been related to a number of causes, including differential participation in labor migration (Mitchell, 1970; Watson, 1970; Wilson, 1977), differential incorporation into trade networks (Levine, 1962; Cohen, 1966; Mascarenhas and Mbilinyi, 1971), differential participation in ideological systems (Allan et el., 1948; Long, 1968; Barrett, 1974), and, especially, differential control over the factors of production (representative are: Ruthenberg, 1968; Vincent, 1971; Hill, 1972; Parkin, 1972; Feldman, 1974; Raid and Raid, 1975).

In East Africa today there is cause for particular concern regarding the extent to which differential access to land, labor and capital is generating patterns of rural inequality in which a few fortunate households are elevated while the majority remain poor. The concern exists not only because maldistribution of wealth and material well-being implies widespread suffering in rural areas, but because concomitant circumstances such as unequal educational opportunities (Sheffield, 1967; Court and Ghai, 1974), unequal access to development funds (Hyden et al., 1970; Heyer et al., 1971), and unequal nutritional intake (Gerlach, 1961, 1964; Dema, 1969; Kraut and Cremer, 1969), can lead to social, economic and physiological polarization of the rural population.

Traditional social theory holds that modernization leads to an improvement in the status of women. Until recently, specialists on Africa did not challenge this view (Southall, 1961: 653; Cotran, 1969: 22). This was so because the status of women was not considered a significantly important topic for research. As part of the growing interest in women, the position of women in African society has become a focus of serious study (Paulme, 1963; Little, 1973; Iglitzin and Ross, 1976; Hafkin and Bay, 1976; Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1972). The results of this research, mostly carried out by women, challenge the conventional wisdom that the status of women improves with modernization (Van Allen, 1976; Callaway, 1976; Mbilinyi, 1972; Boserup, 1970). These investigators also indicate that with modernization the position of women has declined both absolutely and relatively in comparison with the improved position of men.

Divorce law and practice is an important barometer of the social status of women in a society. The research upon which this paper is based focused on divorce law and practice in Bobodioulasso, Upper Volta. Its conclusions support the findings of others, such as those noted above, about the negative effect of modernization on women.

Bobodioulasso is the second largest city in Upper Volta. A recent estimate put its population at 118,000 (Rapport Politique, 1975: 9). Like many other African cities, the population is growing rapidly, primarily because of rural-urban migration (Gregory, 1971; Boserup, 1972: 207). This migration in part accounts for the tremendous ethnic diversity of Bobodioulasso, one of the reasons it was selected as the site for this study. The latest available statistics show no fewer than twenty-four different groups represented in the urban area, eleven of these having more than 1,500 members (Rapport Politique, 1975: 9). Although Bobodioulasso is within the predominantly Muslim part of the Sahel, it is not primarily a Muslim area and not, therefore, totally dominated by Muslim attitudes to women. However, Muslims, as well as Christians, are well represented in the city. The area around Bobodioulasso has also retained pre-Muslim and pre-Christian religions and those practising animism still account for the largest percentage of the city's population. They ensure its religious diversity.

The upsurge of ethnic consciousness in urban America which crested during the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired a sustained academic interest in ethnicity as a social phenomenon. This may partly explain the fact that American scholars over the past two decades have been largely concerned with urban ethnicity and have shown little inclination to carry their investigation into rural areas. Among Africanists, Wallerstein (1965: 477) has gone so far as to suggest that ethnicity is an exclusively urban phenomenon. The present paper argues that, although this generalization is unwarranted, one does tend to find more striking manifestations of ethnicity in urban areas than in the countryside. However, the author's study of Igbo migrants in Cameroon reveals that rural centers often favor the articulation of an ethnic identity which is, in some aspects, more functional and consolidated than in the town.

The Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth and his colleagues broke new ground with their provocative analyses of ecological factors which condition the maintenance of ethnic boundaries. They noted that individuals often downplay or transform their ethnic identity in response to the local environmental situation or particular ecological niche that the group comes to occupy. Extreme examples of ethnic transformation are Barth's (1969) southern Pathans who are incorporated into Baluchi tribes as serfs and Haarland's (1969: 61) Fur cultivators who acquire many cattle and ultimately become Baggara Arabs. Less extreme examples of identity manipulation include Eidheim's (1969: 39) Lapp fishing villages and the Mon peasants studied by the American anthropologist Brian Foster (1974).

The nature of the relationship between domestic and foreign conflict behavior has been an important concern of students of both international and comparative politics. Scholars attempting systematically to examine this question on a cross-national basis have generally found the hypothesized positive relationship to be weak or non-existent (Rummel, 1963, 1964, 1968; Tanter, 1966; Haas, 1968). Similarly, studies concentrating on this relationship as it applies to a single nation (Burrowes and Spector, 1973) or to a dyadic relationship (Jensen, 1969) have found no support for the hypothesis.

Most of these studies failed to differentiate between types of government and nations at different levels of development. Additional work by Zinnes and Wilkenfeld (1971) and Wilkenfeld (1969, 1973) indicate that when we control for type of government, (i.e., polyarchic, personalist, and centrist), different types of domestic and foreign conflict are positively, although weakly, correlated. The major exception to the general trend of findings in this area appears in the work of Collins (1973). Utilizing a sample consisting of thirty-three African nations, most of which were excluded from all previous studies, he found strong positive relationships between certain measures of internal and external conflict. Similarly, Copson (1973) found a relationship between domestic conflict and foreign conflict within the African region. It is the purpose of this study to reexamine these seemingly anomalous findings for Black African nations. If the relationship holds as both Collins and Copson suggest, is it a function of the level of development or the type of government of these nations? Is there some particular facet of African political culture that lends itself to a linkage between domestic and foreign conflict? Alternatively, can these findings be explained as merely an artifact of the measurement techniques employed in their analysis?