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.
Unusually, Canada is the only federation in the world not to accord a special administrative subdivision to its capital (c.f.
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.
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.
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.
Its territory includes several other cities, officially called administrative regions, since the Federal District cannot be divided into municipalities in the same manner as the states of Brazil.
The Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands) administrative regency is also included in the formal definition of Jakarta.
Mayors of the five administrative cities and the regent of Kepulauan Seribu administration-regency are not elected, but directly appointed by the Governor and members of the Provincial Parliament of Jakarta.
As per Article 154 of the Federal Constitution, the national capital of Malaysia was set in Kuala Lumpur, then part of the state of Selangor.
The Federal District encompassed the historical municipality of Mexico City (abolished in 1928) and other territories in its surroundings.
The lack of proper legislation often led to ambiguity regarding to what was under the jurisdiction of Mexico City and what fell under the Federal District.
While this is mainly a geographical name for the metropolitan area, a state government body, Awka Capital Territory Development Authority, has been significant in terms of urban planning.
For a time, Pyongyang was considered a "special city" (t'ŭkpyŏlshi 특별시), to make it equivalent to its South Korean counterpart, Seoul.
Created in 1975 out of four cities and twelve municipalities of the province of Rizal and one municipality of the province of Bulacan, the region is administered by seventeen separately elected mayors and their councils which are coordinated by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, a national government agency headed by a chairperson directly appointed by the Philippine President.
In 1983, the government of Solomon Islands gave the designation of Capital Territory to a 22 square-kilometre area around the city of Honiara.
There were no County Council (which is elected by the people and is responsible for example for health care); instead, Stockholm city handled such tasks.
Taipei, the capital of the Republic of China (colloquially known as Taiwan), is a special municipality (Chinese: 直轄市; pinyin: zhíxiáshì).
When created in 1790, the District comprised 100 square miles (260 km2) of land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia.
The City of Washington was built in the center of the District, but other towns were also located in the territory such as Georgetown and Alexandria.