What is the french equivalent of states?

Answer 1

The country of France, including its overseas territories, is divided into 26 state-sized administrative districts called regions, which are further divided into a total of 100 sub-regions called departments, 343 to 346 Senatorial districts or arrondissements, 4032 county-sized areas called cantons and finally the cities or communes of widely varying sizes.

Unlike the US, which began as a confederation of autonomous colonies, France has changed internal governmental divisions as late as 1982, when the Law of Decentralization reorganized governmental representation. Although each commune has an identical municipal form, most have fewer than 500 residents while the largest (Paris) has 2,000,000. The number of communes (nearly 37,000) has proved difficult to reduce.

There are 577 seats in the National Assembly (subject to redistricting by population) and 343 seats (increasing to 346) in the indirectly-elected Senate.