Department (administrative division)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Department (subnational entity)
)
For other uses, see Department (disambiguation).
Map showing countries in the world that have departments as administrative divisions.
  As first level
  As second level

A department (

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.[1]

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).

The division of France into departments was a project particularly identified with the French revolutionary leader the

d'Argenson
.

Today, departments may exist either with or without a

countries' constitutional
and administrative structure.

Countries using departments

*All provinces except

Buenos Aires province
.

Former countries using departments

**Replaced by regions in 2002.
***Before Alaska became a U.S. state, it was designated as the "Department of Alaska".

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-4766-0447-3
    .

External links

See also


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