A department ( 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 .
3-425: Ogoulou is a department of Ngounié Province in southern Gabon . The capital lies at Mimongo . It had a population of 8,361 in 2013. 1°37′12″S 11°36′36″E / 1.62000°S 11.61000°E / -1.62000; 11.61000 This Gabon location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Department (country subdivision) As a territorial entity, "department"
6-665: 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. *All provinces except Buenos Aires province . This article about geography terminology
9-526: 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
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