Capital districts and territories

A capital district, capital region, or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any political or economic advantage relative to the others because of the national capital lying within its borders. A capital territory can be a specific form of federal district.

A distinction should be made between administrative divisions which include national capitals, but have no special designated status legally (for example, Île de France has no distinct quality from other regions of France). Some federal countries (like Belgium and Germany), give their national capitals the status of full, equal federal units.

A few federal countries have their national capitals located in the capital city of a constituent state: Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of federal units and de jure capital of Republika Srpska, the other federal unit; further, Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is the capital of the Canton of Bern.

Unusually, Canada is the only federation in the world not to accord a special administrative subdivision to its capital (cf. District of Columbia (United States), Federal District (Brazil), Federal Capital Territory (Nigeria), National Capital Territory (India), Australian Capital Territory (Australia)); Ottawa is merely another municipality in the Province of Ontario. The Canadian government does designate the Ottawa area as the National Capital Region, although this term merely represents the jurisdictional area of the government agency that administers federally owned lands and buildings and is not an actual political unit. The City of Ottawa is governed as any other city in Ontario would be. The capital Berlin is one of three cities that operate as States of Germany.

In some non-federal countries there are capital cities that do not belong to any region, but have a special status, for example Oslo in Norway. In some countries, the region including the capital does not have special significance but has names hinting at that. For example, the Capital Region of Denmark is the name of a normal national region.

The following have a special administrative district or territory for their capital cities:

The Buenos Aires city, previously in the Federal District of Argentina. In 1996, under the 1994 reform of the Argentine Constitution, the city gained autonomous city status, changed its formal name to Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, and held its first mayoral elections. Buenos Aires is represented in the Argentine Senate by three senators and in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies by 25 national deputies.

The Australian Capital Territory is one of two self-governing internal territories of the Commonwealth of Australia, the other being the Northern Territory. Created in 1911, the ACT was originally called the Federal Capital Territory, the current name being acquired in 1938. The ACT was constituted specifically to house the seat of government, the goal being to avoid situating the new nation's capital Canberra in either New South Wales or Victoria, the two most populous states. The ACT is an enclave of New South Wales.