Country subdivision: Difference between revisions

A country subdivision or a subdivision of a country^[1] is a subdivision of a country's territory. As such it can, apart from land-based territory also include territorial waters.

Subdivisions of a country's territory exist to support specific tasks. Local government, postal addressing, observance of official time, gathering information for census or votes in elections or arrangement of competitions are tasks for which countries are often subdivided into smaller parts.

In some countries certain subdivisions are used for a large variety of tasks, e.g. the territories defined by the departments of France, primarily existing as administrative subdivisions, are also used for postal code zones and have been used as primary zones for geographic telephone numbers in France.

A country subdivision is an abstract creation and distinct from a landform as studied in physical geography, e.g. a basin, a desert, a forest, a valley. Nevertheless, the border of a country subdivision can be influenced by physical characteristics of an area or also match the borders of a landform exactly.

The amount of tasks performed within the borders of a specific country subdivision varies, e.g. the departments of France had been used not only as a basis for enacting laws but also car license plates, telephone number prefixes and postal code zones were based on the departmental borders.

Some entities also lose certain functions, e.g. the Traditional districts of Denmark, have once been administrative but are now only used to identify location in some cases. A similar loss of functionality applies to the counties in England, now named ceremonial counties.

Some maps as illustration of the differences in territorial coverage, United States:

• 
  US Census Bureau Regions
• 
  ZIP code zones
• 
  Local access and transport area (LATA) used in U.S. telecommunications regulation.

Netherlands:

• 
  4 NUTS 1 regions - "Landsdeel"
• 
  6 primary telephone prefix areas
• 
  9 primary postal code regions
• 
  10 Police regions (2012)
• 
  10 Judical regions "arrondissements", 4 "resorts"
• 
  12 NUTS 2 regions - provinces
• 
  25 Police regions (1993)
• 
  25 ambulance regions
• 
  26 Water boards
• 
  40 NUTS 3 regions - COROP (Statistical areas)
• 
  Second-level post code areas (2-digits)
• 
  1952 telephone regions

Specific tasks may include, administration, collection of information, coordination of observed time, arrangement of sport competitions etc.

Administrative division are used to directly administer or govern a specific territory, i.e. special laws for that territory may exist.

A few countries have administrative divisions that are themselves called "division" or "subdivision".

In ISO 3166-2 (Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions - Part 2: Country subdivision code) the term "country subdivision" is used in the title of the standard. The text clarifies that ISO 3166-2 contains a complete breakdown into a relevant level of administrative subdivisions of all countries ^[2], thus the standard only refers to a specific kind of country subdivisions.

Census divisions are divisions of a territory for the purpose to perform a census, e.g. census geographic units, census metropolitan areas, and census subdivision.

In North America, "Census division" and "census subdivision" are themselves types of census divisions.

An electoral division is a distinct territorial subdivision for holding a separate election for one or more seats in a legislative body. Effectively it groups together the people that make up the body of eligible voters within a specific territory.

In some countries these terms or their native equivalents are used to identify types of administrative country subdivisions; for example, the constituencies of Namibia. The term ward is used in both ways.

A legal district or judicial district denotes the territorial area for which a legal court has jurisdiction.

Military districts are formations of a state's armed forces which are responsible for a certain area of territory. They are often more responsible for administrative than operational matters, and in countries with conscript forces, often handle parts of the conscription cycle.

Navies have also used a similar model, with organizations such as the United States naval districts. A number of navies in South America used naval districts at various points in time.

Some countries have postal code zones. In the UK there also existed postal counties.

Sport organizations sometimes create their own territorial groupings to arrange competitions. The territories can follow administrative subdivision boundaries, but can also create new regions, e.g. in Germany the Fußball-Regionalliga groups states together. In the British Isles, The Football Association groups England, a part of the United Kingdom with the three Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. This grouping is not a territorial subdivision of a country.

Most countries have a geographic numbering plan included in their telephone numbering plan.

Area codes in the United States do not relate directly to administrative divisions. E.g. area code 207 covers only area in the state of Maine, while the reverse is not true, and some part of Maine is covered by a code mainly used in the neighboring country of Canada.

Some countries divide their territory to organize fresh water supply.

Other types of country subdivision include statistical divisions, planning or development regions, school districts, special-purpose districts, time zones, and transport regions.

• Supranationalism
• Trade bloc
• List of terms for heads of a country subdivision