then france is divided into 101 departments. the departments are divided into 342 arrondissements. the "arrondissements" are re-divided into 4,032 cantons. the smallest subdivision is the commune (there are 36,699 communes). on 1 january 2008, insee counted 36,781 communes in france. 36,569 of them are in metropolitan france and 212 of them are in overseas france.