How many countries have states?

Question

Me and my cousin were naming all the countries in the world (we were bored) and we realized that America has states but not a lot of other countries do. Do any other countries have states?

Answer 1

Unlike some of the countries named in other answers, most of the states in the US were never independent (Texas and sort of Calif. being exceptions)

Not mentioned is that Mexico and Brazil have official states.

A country has to be certain, large, size, for having a state government level between the National government and the County governments because it costs money to have a state government. You will notice that many of the examples listed elsewhere were colonies of Britain or Spain and their structure was based on different companies founding different settlements that considered themselves rivals as in the US. Usually, the National government is called the Federal government when there are states that are federated.

Answer 2

Quite a few do. They are not always *called* states, and the degree of autonomy varies from country to country.

Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Germany spring to mind as good examples.

And there's the United Kingdom, which consists of three countries and a province.

Probably a lot more that I can't immediately think of.

Answer 3

Here are the largest countries that call their subdivisions "states"

USA, Mexico, Brazil, India, Australia, Germany and Myanmar (Burma)

if you go to the CIA Factbook website, you can get lists of the states going country by country.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications...

Answer 4

The degree of autonomy varies from country to country.

Answer 5

Many countries do have states and they form unions to make a larger country as the United States of America is an excellent example.  

However, many other Nations have a similar make up, like they are made of states but the states are not refered to as states but other names like provinces or territories.  Look at Australia and Canada.  They are made up from states and Australia has a Northern territory, that were Darwin is.  Australia's 7th state is actually an Island, Tasmania.  

If we look at Russia it has states that make it up and they are actually member states of the new Russian confederation.  That means they are loosely bound together.  The former Yugoslavia was made up of several other Countries, all with different ethnic backgrounds.  

Then if we take a look at both Germany and the UK.  They both are made up from smaller 'states'.  The UK contains England, Scotland, Wales and Nortern Ireland.  All are actual countries with their own historical identity but they are bound together as one nation.  Germay is much the same comprising, Prussia, Hanover, Bavaria, Saxony.  All states that were once ruled by Kings and Princes until Uinification in 1871.