subpolity

plural subpolities

1. A subdivision of a polity.

   It is quite conceivable that human history should have begun with a single all-embracing polity, and that as this grew in magnitude and complexity it should have been decentralized and divided into subpolities, each united within by its local peculiarities.

   1945, Ralph Barton Perry, “Political Frame of World Order”, in One World in the Making, New York, N.Y.: Current Books, Inc., A[aron] A. Wyn, →OCLC, page 77

   2 more examples

   The United States is certainly no tight little city-state, but a continent with wide variation in social and economic conditions. Local heresies from the central conception of the good life are inevitable. And yet, looking at the formal “ordering of the offices,” the legal structure of the subpolities of the American polity, there is an apparent monotonous uniformity that makes most texts in state and local government arid in the extreme.

   1957 autumn, Norton E[nneking] Long, “Aristotle and the Study of Local Government”, in Alvin Johnson, editor, Social Research […], volume 24, number 3, New York, N.Y.: Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research, →ISSN, →OCLC, section II, page 295

   Buganda’s position at the centre of the country and of the national administrative machinery forced upon the region a degree of openness and national accountability never demanded of the Northern emirates of Nigeria. On the whole Buganda as a subpolity remained, it must be admitted, relatively illiberal. But her centrality saved her from being a closed society.

   1967 August, G. F. Engholm, Ali A[l’amin] Mazrui, “Violent Constitutionalism in Uganda”, in Ali A. Mazrui, Violence and Thought: Essays on Social Tensions in Africa, London; Harlow, Essex: Longmans, published 1969, →ISBN, page 156