A country subdivision is a part 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.

Use of the term "subdivision"

Subdivision as an act

• International Bureau of the American Republics in Hand book of the American republics - 1891: the present arrangement of the country's subdivision into States under the new constitution, referring to the states of Brazil ^[1]
• Chase Manhattan Bank - 1964 The European markets: a guide for American businessmen: "As a result of the country's subdivision into rather autonomous cantons" ^[2]

Subdivision, Sub-division or Sub-Division as a territory

• Statistics Canada 2003-01-20: " Census Subdivision" ^[3]
• In India a Sub-division or Sub-Division is a term for a specific type of territory below a district. Example: " Udaipur Sub-Division" ^[4]

Subdivision of a country as a territory

• USCIS/ Immigration and Nationality Act: ACT 241 - DETENTION AND REMOVAL OF ALIENS ORDERED REMOVED: "to a country, or a political or territorial subdivision of a country" ^[5]
• USSEC Final Rule: Offer and Sale of Securities to Canadian Tax-Deferred Retirement Savings Accounts Rule: "the government of any foreign country or of any political subdivision of a foreign country" ^[6]
• Labeling Imported Wines With Multistate Appellations (2008R-265P): "A state, province, territory, or similar political subdivision of a country equivalent to a state or county" ^[7]
• BBC in definition of data fields - 2002 : first subdivision of a country - examples: Federal states, Länder, Scotland, second subdivision of a country - examples: Provence, South-East England, Schwaben, third subdivision of a country - examples: "County, Kreis, Department, Kanton" ^[8]

Country subdivision as a compound noun referring to a territory

• National Council for Geographic Education - The Journal of geography, Volume 26 - 1927 "Each country subdivision (variously called states or provinces in South America) is given a number" ^[9]
• International Organization for Standardization in ISO 3166-2, 1998: 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 ^[10], thus the standard only refers to a specific kind of country subdivisions, namely administrative ones.
  • Part 2: Country subdivision code which gives codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g provinces or states) of all countries - ^[11]
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, description of PHIN vocabulary ^[12]
  • "contains country subdivision codes"
  • "Preferred concept name has been created by concatenating the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision concept name", Example: Concept name - "A Coruña", Preferred Concept Name - "A Coruña, ES" ^[13]
  • "Country Subdivision type (Province, State)"
• Food and Drug Administration USFDA: "country subdivision and/or mail/zip code" ... "page displays with the new country in static text and the Country Subdivision drop-down list contains applicable subdivisions for that country.", "Business Name; Street Address; Country Subdivision" ^[14]
• Hamilton A. Tyler, Keith S. Brown, Kent H. Wilson - 1994: "for each country from N to S. Each locality is followed by its state, department or province (country subdivision, in parentheses)" ^[15]

Comparison with other geographic areas

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.

Type of area	Abstraction	Examples
Group of countries	abstract	European Union, Eurozone, Union of South American Nations
Country	abstract	Australia
Country subdivision	abstract	Artemisa Province, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Landform	non-abstract	Atlantic Ocean, Amazon Basin, Africa

Amount of tasks, changes of tasks

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.

Differences in territorial coverage

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

• 
  10 Standard Federal Regions
• 
  US Census Bureau Regions
• 
  US Census Bureau - 4 official regions, 9 official divisions
• 
  9 Regional Areas of the Forest Service
• 
  6 time zones
• 
  12 geographic Court of Appeals districts, incl. 1 for D.C.
• 
  10 ZIP code zones
• 
  Local access and transport area (LATA) used in U.S. telecommunications regulation.
• 
  Boy Scouts of America regional division
• 
  10 EGRID NERC Regions,
• 
  24 EGRID Subregions
• 
  10 FEMA regions
• 
  12 Federal Reserve Banks
• 
  122 regions of the National Weather Service

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

Country subdivisions by type of task

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

Administrative division

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".

ISO 3166-2

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 ^[16], thus the standard only refers to a specific kind of country subdivisions.

Census division

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.

Electoral division

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.

Irrigation district

Judicial district

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

Military district

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.

Police district

Postal district

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

Sanitary district

Sport district

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.

Statistical division

The European Union's Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics define areas to be used for statistical purposes.

Telephone dialing prefix division

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.

Water district

Some countries divide their territory to organize fresh water supply.

Other types

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

See also

• Supranationalism
• Trade bloc

References