Country subdivision can be any type of a subdivision of the territory of a country. Since countries are mostly defined in a political sense the most common country subdivisions often are administrative divisions, where sometimes the term political division is preferred.

In a wider and non administrative sense the term can also encompass other ways of non-geomorphologic divisioning. A country subdivision can coincide with a geomorphologic area, e.g. basins, deserts, valleys etc. But these entities also exist on their own, i.e. without being country subdivisions.

The regions of Brazil are one example of non-geomorphologic and non-administrative country subdivisions. They are defined along administrative boundaries but are not used directly as admnistrative entities.

As used by ISO 3166-2 Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 2: Country subdivision code the term refers to primary admninistrative divisions of countries and of dependent areas. This could be states, provinces, departments etc. See Matrix of subnational entities.

In a narrow sense the term subdivision may refer to specific entities 1) the Census subdivision (official term) of Canada and 2) to a small piece of land in the United States, see Subdivision (land). In the first case Census subdivisions are sub-divisions of the census divisions of Canada.

Subdivisions by country | Subnational entities