Subpolity

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.

Source: wiktionary

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.

Source: wiktionary

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.

Source: wiktionary