Municipalities ( sq, or ) are the second-level

administrative divisions Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

, below

counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

and above

administrative units Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

communes An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, relig ...

. Since the most recent administrative reforms in 2014, Albania has 61 municipalities.

History

Municipalities are considered the basic administrative division of Albania. Since its Declaration of Independence from the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

in 1912, Albania has reorganized internal administration 21 times. From independence until the year 2000, regional government was organized into

regions In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...

() of varing numbers, size, and importance. They were consolidated into groups comprising 12

in 1991. Following the 1998 constitutional reforms, the 36 regions of the time were abolished entirely and replaced by the larger counties and two kinds of municipalities: urban municipalities () and rural ones (). In 2014, this was revised to reduce the number of urban municipalities to 61 and extended their jurisdiction over the surrounding countryside to create regional administrations, while using the

renamed

()as a third-level division for

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-l ...

. This first took effect in the 2015 local elections.

List

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Municipalities Of Albania Government of Albania Albania geography-related lists

Subdivisions of Albania Municipalities, Albania