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Administrative division



 
 
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Administrative divisions are divisions of a political division
Political division

A political division is a term of art of geography defining the concept of a geographic region accepted to be in the jurisdiction of a particular government entity....
. In other words, they are designated portions of a country. They are also called subnational entities. They are each granted a certain degree of autonomy
Autonomous area

An autonomous area is an area of a country that has a degree of autonomy, or freedom from an external authority. Typically it is either geographically distinct from the country or is populated by a national minority....
, and are required to manage themselves through their own local government
Local government

Local governments are administrative offices that are smaller than a state. The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government....
s. Countries are divided up into these smaller units to make managing their land and the affairs of their people easier.






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Administrative divisions are divisions of a political division
Political division

A political division is a term of art of geography defining the concept of a geographic region accepted to be in the jurisdiction of a particular government entity....
. In other words, they are designated portions of a country. They are also called subnational entities. They are each granted a certain degree of autonomy
Autonomous area

An autonomous area is an area of a country that has a degree of autonomy, or freedom from an external authority. Typically it is either geographically distinct from the country or is populated by a national minority....
, and are required to manage themselves through their own local government
Local government

Local governments are administrative offices that are smaller than a state. The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government....
s. Countries are divided up into these smaller units to make managing their land and the affairs of their people easier. For example, a country may be divided into province
Province

A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state....
s (or states), which in turn are divided into counties
County

A county is a land area of Local government government within a larger state. A county may have city and towns within its area....
, which in turn may be divided in whole or in part into municipalities
Municipality

A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them....
. These are only a few of the names given to administrative subdivisions; more examples are provided below.

Administrative divisions are a type of country subdivision
Country subdivision

Country subdivision refers to the division of a country's territory for the sake of its local government, description or other such purpose. The resulting units of division are known generically as "country subdivisions"....
, and can overlap with the other types. The other types of country subdivision generally don't have governments.

Administrative divisions are conceptually separate from dependent areas, in that the former are included in the core or mainland of the respective state
State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
.

Examples of administrative divisions


English terms


In many of the following terms corresponding to British cultural influence, areas of relatively low mean population density might bear a title of an entity one would expect to be either larger or smaller. There is no fixed rule, for "all politics is local" as is perhaps well demonstrated by their relative lack of systemic order. In the realm of self-government, any of these can and does occur along a stretch of road—which for the most part is passing through rural unsettled countryside. Since the terms are administrative political subdivisions of the local regional government their exact relationship and definitions are subject to home rule
Home rule

Home rule refers to a demand that constituent parts of a state be given greater self-governance within the greater administrative purview of the central government....
 considerations, tradition, as well as state
State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
 statute law and local governmental (administrative) definition and control. In the British cultural legacy, most regional entities begin with fairly expansive counties which encompass an appreciable territorial area and procede down in size to smaller entities.

Within those entities are the large and small cities or towns, which may or may not be the county seat
County seat

A county seat or parish seat is a term for an administrative center for a county or civil parish, primarily used in the United States. In the Northeast United States, the statutory term often is shire town, but colloquially county seat is the term in use there....
. Some of the world's larger cities culturally, if not officially, span into multiple counties and those crossing state or provincial boundaries culturally are quite common as well, but are rarely incorporated within the same municipal government. Many sister cities share a water boundary which quite often serves as a border of both cities and counties (e.g. Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England....
 and Boston, Massachusetts
Boston, Massachusetts

Boston is the State capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is considered the economic and cultural center of the region, and is sometimes regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England." Boston city proper had a 2007 est...
; to the casual traveler appear as one large city—while locally they each are quite culturally different and occupy different counties.

  • Area
    Area

    Area is a quantity expressing the two-dimensional size of a defined part of a surface, typically a region bounded by a closed curve. The term surface area refers to the total area of the exposed surface of a 3-dimensional solid, such as the sum of the areas of the exposed sides of a polyhedron....


Urban or rural regions:
    • Borough
      Borough

      A borough is an administrative division of various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely....
       or alternatively, "boro
      Boro

      Boro has several meanings:*Boro, New South Wales, a locality in Australia*Boro was a Dutch Formula One constructor.*Boro, Togo is a village is the Kara region of Togo...
      "
    • Burgh
      Burgh

      A Burgh is an Wiktionary:Autonomy corporate entity in Scotland, usually a town. This type of administrative division has existed since the 12th century, when David I of Scotland created the first Royal burghs....
    • City
      City

      A city is an urban area with a high population density and a particular administrative, legal, or historical status.Large industrialized cities generally have advanced systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, house, and transportation and more....
    • Shire
      Shire

      A shire is a traditional administrative division of United Kingdom and Australia. Shire has been effectively synonymous with county since the Norman Conquest....
    • Town
      Town

      A town is a type of human settlement ranging from a few to several thousand inhabitants, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas; the precise meaning varies between countries and is not always a matter of legal definition....
    • Township
      Township

      A township is a settlement which has the status and powers of a unit of local government. Specific use of the term to describe political subdivisions has varied by country....
    • Village
      Village

      A village is a clustered human settlement or Residential community, larger than a hamlet , but smaller than a town or city. Though generally located in rural areas, the term urban village may be applied to certain urban area neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in Beirut, Lebanon....
  • Commune
    Commune

    Commune may refer to:* Commune , a community in which resources are shared. Officially organized examples include :** Mir , a village community in czarist Russia...
  • County
    County

    A county is a land area of Local government government within a larger state. A county may have city and towns within its area....
  • Constituency
    Constituency

    A constituency is any cohesive body of people bound by shared identity, goals, or loyalty. Constituency can be used to describe a business's customer base and shareholders, or a charity's donors or those it serves....
     - usually refers to an electoral division
    Electoral division

    An electoral division may be a:* Constituency* Ward ...
     (which is not an administrative division), but in Namibia and in Canton of St. Gallen
    Canton of St. Gallen

    The Canton of St. Gallen is a Cantons of Switzerland of Switzerland. St. Gallen is located in the north east of Switzerland. It covers an area of 2,026 km?, and has a population of 465,937 of which 97,461 are foreigners....
     in Switzerland
    Switzerland

    Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
    , "constituency" means "administrative division".
  • Department (administrative division)
  • Despotate (not subnational)
  • District
    District

    Districts are a type of administrative division, in some countries managed by a local government. They vary greatly in size, spanning entire regions or counties, several municipality, or subdivisions of municipalities....
  • Division
  • Duchy
    Duchy

    A duchy is a territory, fiefdom, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess.Some duchies were sovereignty in areas that would become unified realms only during the Modern era ....
     (partial subnational)
  • Empire
    Empire

    Empire derives from the Latin word imperium, denoting ?military command? in Roman. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
     (not subnational)
  • Kingdom
    Monarchy

    A monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged in an individual, who is the head of state, often for Life tenure or until abdication, and "is wholly set apart from all other members of the state." The person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch....
  • Local council
    Local Council

    A Local Council is a form of local elected government within the Districts of Uganda of Uganda. They were initially established as rebel support structures in the areas controlled by the National Resistance Army of Yoweri Museveni....
  • Municipality
    Municipality

    A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them....
    • rural municipality
      Rural municipality

      A rural municipality, often abbreviated RM, is a form of municipality in the Canada provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, perhaps best comparable to counties or Civil township in the western United States....
    • regional municipality
      Regional municipality

      A Regional Municipality is a type of Canada municipal government similar to and at the same municipal government level as a county, although the specific structure and servicing responsibilities may vary from place to place....
    • regional county municipality
      Regional county municipality

      The term regional county municipality or RCM is used in the Canada province of Quebec to designate one of 86 county-like political and geographic units....
  • Okrug
    Okrug

    Okrug is an administrative division of some Eastern European Slavic peoples states. The word "okrug" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "district", or "region"....
  • Parish
  • Periphery
  • Prefecture
    Prefecture

    Prefecture indicates the office, seat, territorial circumscription of a Prefect. The term prefecture is also used to refer to offices analogous to prefectures....
  • Principality
    Principality

    A principality is a monarchy feudatory or sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or princess, or a monarch with another title within the generic use of the term prince....
     (partial subnational)
  • Province
    Province

    A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state....
  • Region
    Region

    Region is a geographical term that is used in various ways among the different branches of geography. In general, a region is a medium-scale area of land or water, smaller than the whole areas of interest , and larger than a specific site A region may be seen as a collection of smaller units or as one part of a larger whole ....
  • Republic
    Republic

    A republic is a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch but in which the people have an impact on its government. The word originates from the Latin term res publica....
     (partial subnational)
  • Riding
  • Indigenous:
    • Tribe
      Tribe

      A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups ....
    • Indian reservation
      Indian reservation

      An Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native Americans of the United States tribe under the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs....
    • Indian reserve
      Indian reserve

      In Canada, an Indian reserve is specified by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." The Act also specifies that land reserved for the use and benefit of a band which is not vested in the Crown is...
    • Band
      Band society

      A band society is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan....
  • State
  • Special Administrative Region
    Special administrative region

    A special administrative region, or SAR may be:People's Republic of China* Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, self-governing subnational entity in Hong Kong and Macau ...
  • Territory
  • Voivodship


Native terms

See: List of terms for administrative divisions

Translation into English sometimes is difficult.

Compare

  • State
    State

    A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
    , a national or supra-national division.
  • Country
    Country

    Country may refer to the territory of a state, or to a smaller, or former, political division of a geographical region. In another meaning of the word, the country is also a term used to refer to rural areas....
    , a national or supra-national division.
  • Empire
    Empire

    Empire derives from the Latin word imperium, denoting ?military command? in Roman. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
    , a supra-national division.


See also

  • Political division
    Political division

    A political division is a term of art of geography defining the concept of a geographic region accepted to be in the jurisdiction of a particular government entity....
  • ISO 3166-2
    ISO 3166-2

    ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standardization published by the International Organization for Standardization , and defines codes for the names of the principal country subdivisions of all country coded in ISO 3166-1....
     Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 2
  • List of terms for administrative divisions
  • List of etymologies of country subdivision names
  • List of country subdivisions by population
  • List of the largest administrative divisions by area
  • Table of administrative country subdivisions by country
    Table of administrative country subdivisions by country

    The table below indicates the types and, where known, numbers of administrative divisions currently used by countries and their major Dependent territory....
  • List of administrative division name changes
    List of administrative division name changes

    This is a list of administrative divisions which geographical renaming over the course of history.* Swan River Colony ? Western Australia * Van Diemen's Land ? Tasmania ...
  • List of subnational monarchs
    List of subnational monarchs

    The following is a list of subnational monarchs.Notes...


External links