Counties (Albanian: qarqe or qarqet), also sometimes known as prefectures (prefekturë), are the first-level administrative subdivisions of Albania, replacing the earlier districts. Since 2000, there have been 12 counties. Since 2015, they have been divided into 61 municipalities, 373 communes, and 2,972 villages.
Since its Declaration of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, Albania has reorganized its domestic administrative divisions 21 times. The primary division until the year 2000 was into districts (Albanian: rrethe), whose number, size, and importance varied over time.[1] They were organized into groups comprising 12 counties beginning in 1991.[1]
The current status of the counties[2] is based on the 1998 constitution and was carried out on 31 July 2000.[3] The former districts were abolished entirely and replaced with urban municipalities (bashki) and rural municipalities (komuna), which further oversaw villages (fshatra) in the countryside. This was revised in 2014, so that the 2015 local elections divided the counties into municipalities (bashki) at the regional level and administrative units (njësi administrative) for local government.
