Administrative division in the context of "States of Australia"

A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.

The term municipality may also mean the governing body of a given municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district.

A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a definite territory. Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states.

A country often has a single state, with various administrative divisions. A state may be a unitary state or some type of federal union; in the latter type, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation, and they may have some of the attributes of a sovereign state, except being under their federation and without the same capacity to act internationally. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include "province", "region" or other terms.)

A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman provincia, which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term province has since been adopted by many countries. In some countries with no actual provinces, "the provinces" is a metaphorical term meaning "outside the capital city".

While some provinces were produced artificially by colonial powers, others were formed around local groups with their own ethnic identities. Many have their own powers independent of central or federal authority, especially in Canada and Pakistan. In other countries, like China or France, provinces are the creation of central government, with very little autonomy.

A department (French: département, Spanish: departamento) is an administrative or political division in several countries. Departments are the first-level divisions of 11 countries, nine in the Americas and two in Africa. An additional 10 countries use departments as second-level divisions, eight in Africa, and one each in the Americas and Europe.

As a territorial entity, "department" was first used by the French Revolutionary governments, apparently to emphasize that each territory was simply an administrative sub-division of the united sovereign nation. (The term "department", in other contexts, means an administrative sub-division of a larger organization.) This attempt to de-emphasize local political identity contrasts strongly with countries divided into "states" (implying local sovereignty).

A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal government; they are called prefectures, regions, or provinces in the case of a centralised government. This form of government may be created through voluntary and mutual cession and is described as unionism by its constituent members and proponents. In other cases, it may arise from political unification, characterised by coercion and conquest. The unification of separate states which, in the past, had together constituted a single entity is known as reunification. Unlike a personal union or real union, the individual constituent entities may have devolution of powers but are subordinate to a central government or coordinated in some sort of organization. In a federalised system, the constituent entities usually have internal autonomy, for example in the setup of police departments, and share power with the federal government, for whom external sovereignty, military forces, and foreign affairs are usually reserved. The union is recognised internationally as a single political entity. A political union may also be called a legislative union or state union.A union may be effected in many forms, broadly categorized as:

• Incorporating union
• Incorporating annexation
• Federal union
• Federative annexation
• Mixed unions

Self-governance, self-government, self-sovereignty or self-rule is the ability of a person or group to exercise all necessary functions of regulation without intervention from an external authority. It may refer to personal conduct or to any form of institution, such as family units, social groups, affinity groups, legal bodies, industry bodies, religions, and political entities of various degrees. Self-governance is closely related to various philosophical and socio-political concepts such as autonomy, independence, self-control, self-discipline, and sovereignty.

In the context of nation states, self-governance is called national sovereignty which is an important concept in international law. In the context of administrative division, a self-governing territory is called an autonomous region. Self-governance is also associated with political contexts in which a population or demographic becomes independent from colonial rule, absolute government, absolute monarchy, or any government that they perceive does not adequately represent them. It is therefore a fundamental tenet of many democracies, republics and nationalist governments. Mahatma Gandhi's term "swaraj" is a branch of this self-rule ideology. Henry David Thoreau was a major proponent of self-rule in lieu of immoral governments.

A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state and remains politically outside the controlling state's integral area.

A dependent territory is commonly distinguished from a country subdivision by being considered not to be a constituent part of a sovereign state. An administrative subdivision, instead, is understood to be a division of a state proper. A dependent territory, conversely, often maintains a great degree of autonomy from its controlling state. Historically, most colonies were considered to be dependent territories. Not all autonomous entities are considered to be dependent territories. Most inhabited, dependent territories have their own ISO 3166 country codes.

A unitary state is a sovereign state governed as a single entity in which the central government is the supreme authority. The central government may create or abolish administrative divisions (sub-national or sub-state units). Such units exercise only the powers that the central government chooses to delegate. Although political power may be delegated through devolution to regional or local governments by statute, the central government may alter the statute, to override the decisions of devolved governments or expand their powers.

The modern unitary state concept originated in France; in the aftermath of the Hundred Years' War, national feelings that emerged from the war unified France. The war accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a unitary state. The French then later spread unitary states by conquests, throughout Europe during and after the Napoleonic Wars, and to the world through the vast French colonial empire. Presently, prefects remain an illustration of the French unitary state system, as the representatives of the State in each department, tasked with upholding central government policies.

Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North America—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (which upon Confederation was divided into Ontario and Quebec)—united to form a federation, becoming a fully independent country over the next century. Over its history, Canada's international borders have changed several times as it has added territories and provinces, making it the world's second-largest country by area.

The major difference between a Canadian province and a territory is that provinces receive their power and authority from the Constitution Act, 1867 (formerly called the British North America Act, 1867). Territories are federal territories whose territorial governments have powers delegated to them by the Parliament of Canada. Powers are divided between the Government of Canada (the federal government) and the provincial governments by the Constitution Act, either exclusively or concurrently. A change to the division of powers between the federal government and the provinces requires a constitutional amendment. A similar change affecting the territories can be performed unilaterally by the government or Parliament of Canada.

A {{}} (Spanish pronunciation: [depaɾtaˈmento]) is a country subdivision in several Latin American countries, mostly as top-level subnational divisions (except in Argentina). It is usually simply translated as "department".

A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes, a hamlet is defined for official or administrative purposes.

The word and concept of a hamlet can be traced back to Norman England, where the Old French hamelet came to apply to small human settlements.

Borders are generally defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders can be established through warfare, colonization, or mutual agreements between the political entities that reside in those areas.

Some borders—such as most states' internal administrative borders, or inter-state borders within the Schengen Area—are open and completely unguarded. Most external political borders are partially or fully controlled, and may be crossed legally only at designated border checkpoints; adjacent border zones may also be controlled. For the purposes of border control, airports and seaports are also classed as borders. Most countries have some form of border control to regulate or limit the movement of people, animals, and goods into and out of the country. Under international law, each country is generally permitted to legislate the conditions that have to be met in order to cross its borders, and to prevent people from crossing its borders in violation of those laws.

Regionalism is a political ideology that seeks to increase the political power, influence and self-determination of the people of one or more subnational regions. It focuses on the "development of a political or social system based on one or more" regions, and/or the national, normative, or economic interests of a specific region, group of regions or another subnational entity, gaining strength from or aiming to strengthen the "consciousness of and loyalty to a distinct region with a homogeneous population", similarly to nationalism. More specifically, "regionalism refers to three distinct elements: movements demanding territorial autonomy within unitary states; the organization of the central state on a regional basis for the delivery of its policies including regional development policies; political decentralization and regional autonomy".

Regions may be delineated by administrative divisions, culture, language and religion, among others. Regionalists' demands occur in "strong" forms (such as sovereigntism, separatism, sovereignty, secession and independence), as well as more "moderate" campaigns for greater autonomy (such as states' rights, decentralization or devolution). Strictly speaking, regionalists favour confederations over unitary nation states with strong central governments. They may, however, embrace intermediate forms of federalism. Proponents of regionalism usually claim that strengthening the governing bodies and political powers within a region, at the expense of a centralized government, will benefit local populations by improving regional or local economies, in terms of better fiscal responsibility, regional development, allocation of resources, implementation of localist policies and plans, competitiveness among regions and, ultimately, the whole country, consistent with the principle of subsidiarity.

A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.

A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province. Counties are defined in diverse ways, but they are typically current or former official administrative divisions within systems of local government, and in this sense counties are similar to shires, and typically larger than municipalities. Various non-English terms can be translated as "county" or "shire" in other languages, and in English new terms with less historical connection have been invented such as "council area" and "local government district". On the other hand, in older English-speaking countries the word can still refer to traditional historical regions such as some of those which exist in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The term is also sometimes used for districts with specific non-governmental purposes such as courts, or land registration.

Historically the concept of a geographical administrative "county" is European (from French: comté, Latin: comitatus), and represented the territorial limits of the jurisdiction of a medieval count, or a viscount (French: vîcomte, Latin: vicecomes) supposedly standing in the place of a count. However, there were no such counts in medieval England, and when the French-speaking Normans took control of England after 1066 they transplanted the French and medieval Latin terms to describe the pre-existing Anglo Saxon shires, but they did not establish any system placing the administration of shires under the control of high-level nobles. Instead, although there were exceptions, the officers responsible for administrative functions, such as tax collection, or the mustering of soldiers, were sheriffs, theoretically assigned by the central government, and controlled directly by the monarch.

A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions of municipalities, school district, or political district.

A federal territory is an administrative division under the direct and usually exclusive jurisdiction of a federation's national government. A federal territory is a part of a federation, but not a part of any federated state. The states constitute the federation itself and share sovereignty with the federal government, while a territory does not have sovereign status and is constitutionally dependent on the federal government.

Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level. It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories have the power to make legislation relevant to the area, thus granting them a higher level of autonomy.

Devolution differs from federalism in that the devolved powers of the subnational authority may be temporary and are reversible, ultimately residing with the central government. Thus, the state remains de jure unitary. Legislation creating devolved parliaments or assemblies can be repealed or amended by central government in the same way as any statute. In federal systems, by contrast, sub-unit government is guaranteed in the constitution, so the powers of the sub-units cannot be withdrawn unilaterally by the central government (i.e. not without the process of constitutional amendment). The sub-units therefore have a lower degree of protection under devolution than under federalism.

A comune (pronounced [koˈmuːne]; pl.: comuni, pronounced [koˈmuːni]) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions (regioni) and provinces (province). The comune can also have the title of città (lit. 'city').

Formed praeter legem according to the principles consolidated in medieval municipalities, the comune is provided for by article 114 of the Constitution of Italy. It can be divided into frazioni, which in turn may have limited power due to special elective assemblies.