List of forms of government
22-420: 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 . The English word
44-559: A country is sometimes called the " first-level (or first-order ) administrative division" or "first administrative level". Its next subdivision might be called "second-level administrative division" or "second administrative level" and so on. An alternative terminology is provided by the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics which terms the principal division as the second level or NUTS-2. Administrative divisions are conceptually separate from dependent territories , with
66-614: A few exceptions, Soviet oblasts were named after their administrative centers. In 1922, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was divided into 33 administrative divisions also called oblasts . In 1929, oblasts were replaced with larger administrative units known as banovinas . During the Yugoslav Wars , several Serb Autonomous Oblasts were formed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia . These oblasts were later merged into
88-406: A number of smaller entities. Within those entities are the large and small cities or towns, which may or may not be the county 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
110-660: A particular independent sovereign state is divided. Such a unit usually has an administrative authority with the power to take administrative or policy decisions for its area. Usually, sovereign states have several levels of administrative division. Common names for the principal (largest) administrative divisions include: states (subnational states, rather than sovereign states), provinces , lands , oblasts and regions . These in turn are often subdivided into smaller administrative units known by names such as comarcas , raions or districts , which are further subdivided into municipalities , communes or communities constituting
132-427: A province, region, canton, land, governorate, oblast, emirate, or country. 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 considered autonomous regions or de facto constituent states of that country. This relationship is by some authors called a federacy or asymmetric federalism . An example
154-524: A sovereign state such as the Principality of Monaco , to a small village such as West Hampton Dunes, New York . The territory over which a municipality has jurisdiction may encompass: Powers of municipalities range from virtual autonomy to complete subordination to the state . Municipalities may have the right to tax individuals and corporations with income tax , property tax , and corporate income tax , but may also receive substantial funding from
176-494: A water boundary, which quite often serves as a border of both cities and counties. For example, Cambridge and Boston , Massachusetts appear to the casual traveler as one large city, while locally they each are quite culturally different and occupy different counties. General terms for these incorporated places include " municipality ", " settlement ", "locality", and "populated place". Oblast An oblast ( / ˈ ɒ b l æ s t / or / ˈ ɒ b l ɑː s t / )
198-467: Is (by area or population), the fewer levels of administrative divisions it has. For example, Vatican City does not have any administrative subdivisions, and Monaco has only one level (both are city-states ), while such countries as France and Pakistan have five levels each. The United States is composed of states, possessions, territories , and a federal district , each with varying numbers of subdivisions. The principal administrative division of
220-704: Is a type of administrative division in Bulgaria and several post-Soviet states , including Belarus , Russia and Ukraine . Historically, it was used in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union . The term oblast is often translated into English as 'region' or 'province'. In some countries, oblasts are also known by cognates of the Russian term. The term oblast is borrowed from Russian область ( pronounced [ˈobɫəsʲtʲ] ), where it
242-656: Is derived from French municipalité , which in turn derives from the Latin municipalis , based on the word for social contract ( municipium ), referring originally to the Latin communities that supplied Rome with troops in exchange for their own incorporation into the Roman state (granting Roman citizenship to the inhabitants) while permitting the communities to retain their own local governments (a limited autonomy). A municipality can be any political jurisdiction , from
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#1732766054499264-497: Is inherited from Old East Slavic , in turn borrowed from Church Slavonic область oblastĭ 'power, empire', formed from the prefix oб- (cognate with Classical Latin ob 'towards, against' and Ancient Greek ἐπί/ἔπι epi 'in power, in charge') and the stem власть vlastǐ 'power, rule'. In Old East Slavic, it was used alongside оболость obolostǐ —the equivalent of об- 'against' and волость 'territory, state, power' (cognate with English 'wield'; see volost ). In
286-730: 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 to home rule considerations, tradition, as well as state statute 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
308-485: Is the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan within Uzbekistan . 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
330-612: The Republic of Serbian Krajina and the Republika Srpska . Since 1999, Bulgaria has been divided into 28 oblasts, usually translated as "provinces". Before, the country was divided into just nine units, also called oblasts. Oblasts are further subdivided into raions ( districts ), ranging in number from 3 to 10 per entity. Viloyat and welaýat are derived from the Turkish language term vilayet , itself derived from
352-647: The Russian Empire , oblasts were considered to be administrative units and were included as parts of Governorates General or krais . The majority of then-existing oblasts were on the periphery of the country (e.g. Kars Oblast or Transcaspian Oblast ) or covered the areas where Cossacks lived. In the Soviet Union , oblasts were one of the types of administrative divisions of the union republics . As any administrative units of this level, oblasts were composed of districts ( raions ) and cities/towns directly under oblasts' jurisdiction. Some oblasts also included autonomous entities called autonomous okrugs . Because of
374-657: The Soviet Union electrification program under the GOELRO plan , Ivan Alexandrov , as director of the Regionalisation Committee of Gosplan , divided the Soviet Union into thirteen European and eight Asiatic oblasts, using rational economic planning rather than "the vestiges of lost sovereign rights". The names of oblasts did not usually correspond to the names of the respective historical regions, as they were created as purely administrative units. With
396-744: The Spanish term ayuntamiento , referring to a municipality's administration building, is extended via synecdoche to denote the municipality itself. In Moldova and Romania , both municipalities ( municipiu ; urban administrative units) and communes ( comună ; rural units) exist, and a commune may be part of a municipality. In many countries, comparable entities may exist with various names. Administrative division Administrative divisions (also administrative units , administrative regions , #-level subdivisions , subnational entities , or constituent states , as well as many similar generic terms) are geographical areas into which
418-534: The community living in the area and the common interest. These include terms: The same terms "Gemeente" (Dutch) or "Gemeinde" (German) may be used for church congregations or parishes, for example, in the German and Dutch Protestant churches. In Greece, the word Δήμος ( demos ) is used, also meaning 'community'; the word is known in English from the compound democracy (rule of the people). In some countries,
440-431: 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, in geographical databases ). Communities united in a federation under a federal government are more specifically known as federated states . A federated state may be referred to as
462-402: The smallest units of subdivision (the local governments ). Some administrative division names (such as departments , cantons , prefectures , counties or governorates ) can be used for principal, second-level, or third-level divisions. The levels of administrative divisions and their structure largely varies by country (and sometimes within a single country). Usually the smaller the country
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#1732766054499484-476: The state. In some European countries, such as Germany, municipalities have the constitutional right to supply public services through municipally-owned public utility companies . Terms cognate with "municipality", mostly referring to territory or political structure, are Spanish municipio (Spain) and municipalidad (Chile), Catalan municipi , Portuguese município . In many countries, terms cognate with "commune" are used, referring to
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