From its inception, the collation of official statistics has been constitutive of state power and of many other modes of social organisation also. The co-ordinated administrative control achieved by modern governments is inseparable from the routine monitoring of "official data" in which all contemporary states engage.

DEFINE: Defines the constitutive relationship between data collection and governance — statistics aren't neutral records but are generative of administrative control.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 107