The County is a territorial political sub-division of government standing between the local city or town government and the State government. Its purpose is primarily administrative in nature and is directed toward administering certain government functions best performed on a regional basis pursuant to the General laws of the Commonwealth. The executive authority of Norfolk County is vested in the County Commissioners who are popularly elected by its residents. As such they are more responsive to individual needs and the trend of opinion within the County. The three Commissioners are elected for a four-year term with only one permitted from any one city or town. 

The County is without a popularly elected legislative authority, it is therefore dependent upon its Advisory Board and the General Court for its budgetary appropriations as well as capital outlay proposals, which require borrowing. 

County revenues are derived from the Registry of Deeds, a tax on the cities and towns of Norfolk County based on their land values, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and various grants. Norfolk County, Massachusetts is the birthplace of four of the 42 individuals who have held the office of President of the United States: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John F. Kennedy, and George H.W. Bush. During the Bush presidency, it was the birthplace of four of the then 40 Presidents, a full ten percent. It is the birthplace of both of the major parties' (Republican and Democratic) candidates in the 1988 U.S. Presidential election, Bush and Michael Dukakis.

As noted above under geography, it is non-contiguous, having not one, but two, outlying exclaves, the town of Brookline, surrounded by Middlesex County and Suffolk County , and the town of Cohasset, surrounded by Plymouth County and the ocean. Brookline was separated when the former towns of West Roxbury and Hyde Park were annexed by Boston and became part of Suffolk County. It is the second Massachusetts county to bear the same name. The defunct "Old" Norfolk County, which was in a different part of the state, existed in the early colonial period in the seventeenth century.