Postby dilbertschalter » May 7th, 2012, 4:42 am
it's certainly true as a matter de jure status that they are literally described as "countries", it's just that that aren't really what people think of as countries in any meaningful sense. as callid noted, you can technically referring to germany as being made up of constituent countries, even though that certainly isn't the case in practice. with the uk, it's a similar situation you have "countries" by name, but not bodies that can actually exercise power over their territory- indeed, until recently, the UK was much less devolved than germany, though that has changed recently in some ways.
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