User:Pmanderson/Country subdivision
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.