Adepartment (French: département, Spanish: departamento) is an administrative or political division in several countries. Departments are the first-level divisions of 11 countries, nine in 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 Abbé Sieyès, although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson.
Today, departments may exist either with or without a representative assembly and executive head depending upon the countries' constitutional and administrative structure.
Benin
Bolivia
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Chad
Colombia
Republic of the Congo
Côte d'Ivoire
El Salvador
France
Gabon
Guatemala
Haiti
Honduras
Mauritania
Nicaragua
Niger
Paraguay
Peru
Senegal
Uruguay
*All provinces except Buenos Aires province.
Cisalpine Republic French Empire
Gran Colombia
Centralist Republic of Mexico
Second Mexican Empire
Kingdom of Holland
Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)
Italian Republic (Napoleonic) Peru**
Duchy of Warsaw
United States***
Kingdom of Westphalia
**Replaced by regions in 2002.
***Before Alaska became a U.S. state, it was designated as the "Department of Alaska".
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French terms for administrative divisions
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