From one point of view, the provincial administration can be analysed in terms of the complex of coexisting relationships between the different elements, the emperor, the provincial governor and his subordinate officials, the province, the provincial communities as a group, the individual community and finally the individual subject. The functioning of the administrative system in the provinces depended upon a superstructure of military and civil officials, appointed to their positions by the central government and directly responsible to it. In contrast to the relative formality of the bureaucratic structure, an attempt to describe how provincial administration worked in practice must take account of the flexibility which the structure permitted and observe the patterns and relationships which developed in the early imperial period. The conduct of the provincial census was fundamental to the taxation system and to the general management of the controls applied to the population by fiscal means.