This polygon shapefile represents the Canton Boundaries for the Pays de la Loire region of France for 2010. These are the level 4 administrative divisions (ADM4) of Pays de la Loire. The cantons of France are territorial subdivisions of the French Republic's 342 arrondissements and 101 departments. Apart from their role as organizational units in certain aspects of the administration of public services and justice, the chief purpose of the cantons today is to serve as constituencies for the election of the members of the representative assembly (General Council) in each department. This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data. Articque informatique. (2010). Canton Boundaries: Pays de la Loire, France, 2010. Articque informatique. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/rt279dn5735 This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.