Administrative divisions[1] (alsoadministrative units,[2][3][4]administrative regions,[5]subnational entities, orconstituent states, as well as many similar generic terms) are geographical areas into which a particular independentsovereign state is divided. Such a unit usually has an administrative authority with the power to take administrative or policy decisions for its area.[3] Administrative divisions are often used as polygons ingeospatial analysis.[6]
The levels of administrative divisions and their structure largely varies by country (and sometimes within a single country). Usually the smaller the country is (by area or population), the fewer levels of administrative divisions it has. For example,Vatican City does not have any administrative subdivisions, andMonaco has only one level (both arecity-states), while such countries asFrance andPakistan have five levels each. TheUnited States is composed of states, possessions,territories, and afederal district, each with varying numbers of subdivisions.
The principal administrative division of a country is sometimes called the "first-level (orfirst-order) administrative division" or "first administrative level". Its next subdivision might be called "second-level administrative division" or "second administrative level" and so on.[1][4][7] An alternative terminology is provided by theNomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics which terms the principal division as the second level or NUTS-2.
Administrative divisions are conceptually separate fromdependent territories, with the former being an integral part of the state and the other being only under some lesser form of control. However, the term "administrative division" can include dependent territories as well as accepted administrative divisions (for example, ingeographical databases).[citation needed]
Communities united in afederation under a federal government are more specifically known asfederated states. A federated state may be referred to as a province, region, canton, land, governorate, oblast, emirate, or country.[8][9][10] Administrative units that are not federated or confederated but enjoy a greater degree of autonomy or self-government than other territories within the same country can be consideredautonomous regions or de facto constituent states of that country. This relationship is by some authors called afederacy orasymmetric federalism.[11] An example is the autonomous republic ofKarakalpakstan withinUzbekistan.[12]
Due to variations in their use worldwide, consistency in the translation of terms from non-English to English is sometimes difficult to maintain. In many of the following terms originating from 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 divisions of the local regional government, their exact relationship and definitions are subject tohome rule considerations, tradition, as well as statestatute law and local governmental (administrative) definition and control. In British cultural legacy, some territorial entities began with fairly expansive counties which encompass an appreciably large area, but were divided over time into a number of smaller entities.
Within those entities are the large and small cities or towns, which may or may not be thecounty seat. Some of the world's larger cities culturally, if not officially, span several counties, and those crossing state or provincial boundaries have much in common culturally 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. For example,Cambridge andBoston,Massachusetts appear to the casual traveler as one large city, while locally they each are quite culturally different and occupy different counties.
SALBArchived 2014-01-15 at theWayback Machine Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) programme of the United Nations.
Statoids, an international convention with standardized two-letter-based multi-level summaries of administrative divisions worldwide (e.g.GH.AH.AS representsAdansi South (AE) in theAccra Home (AH)region of Ghana (GH)).
