Counties of Croatia
The counties of Croatia are called županije in Croatian, županija is the singular form.
The counties were introduced in the 1990 Constitution of Croatia, and only slightly changed up to present. Previously, in socialist Yugoslavia, the Croatian Republic was divided into općine (sing. općina) which were generally smaller than the present counties. The designation općina has been retained for municipalities which are one level smaller than the županije and much smaller than the old općine.
Each county has an assembly (županijska skupština) which is composed of representatives elected by popular vote for four-year terms.
The county assembly elects the executive county leadership (one župan and up to twelve a dožupan), decides on the yearly budget, the county properties etc.
The list of counties, grouped into historic and geographic larger regions:
The suffixes -čka, -ska in the local names indicate genitive, and so the full local name of each of them is $name županija, so e.g. Karlovačka's full name is Karlovačka županija. Some counties also prefer to swap the order of those two words but they are in the minority (since February 7, 1997 when the order was officially changed).
Zagreb itself is grad, a city, due to its importance it's separated from its county and given similar jurisdiction.
