The term municipality may also mean the governing body of a given municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district.
The term is derived from French municipalité and Latin municipalis. The English word municipality derives from the Latin social contract municipium (derived from a word meaning "duty holders"), referring to the Latin communities that supplied Rome with troops in exchange for their own incorporation into the Roman state (granting Roman citizenship to the inhabitants) while permitting the communities to retain their own local governments (a limited autonomy).
The territory over which a municipality has jurisdiction may encompass
Powers of municipalities range from virtual autonomy to complete subordination to the state. Municipalities may have the right to tax individuals and corporations with income tax, property tax, and corporate income tax, but may also receive substantial funding from the state. In some European countries, such as Germany, municipalities have the constitutional right to supply public services through municipally-owned public utility companies.
In many countries, terms cognate with "commune" are used, referring to the community living in the area and the common interest. These include terms:
The same terms may be used for church congregations or parishes, for example, in the German and Dutch Protestant churches.
In Greece, the word Δήμος (demos) is used, also meaning 'community'; the word is known in English from the compound democracy (rule of the people).
In some countries, the Spanish term ayuntamiento, referring to a municipality's administration building, is extended via synecdoche to denote the municipality itself. In Moldova and Romania, both municipalities (municipiu; urban administrative units) and communes (comună; rural units) exist, and a commune may be part of a municipality.
In many countries, comparable entities may exist with various names.
|Country||Term||Example||Subdivision of||Quantity||Notes||Further reading|
|Italy||comune||a province (provincia) which is part of a region (regione).||7,982||Solely used for subdivisions of larger comuni, especially in Rome; municipio indicates the city hall; in some case, they are joined in mountain communities (comunità montane)||List of municipalities of Italy|
|Philippines||bayan, munisipyo or munisipalidad||Janiuay||a province (lalawigan or probinsya, except for Pateros)||1,488||A municipality is the official name for a town and is divided into barangays. Municipalities with a larger population and income may become a city through a city charter.||Municipalities of the Philippines|
|Portugal||município||Lisbon,||18 districts and 2 autonomous regions (Azores and Madeira)||308||Usually a municipality is named after its largest or historically most important town or city. Municipalities are typically much larger than the city or town after which they are named.||List of municipalities of Portugal|
|Puerto Rico||municipio||Arecibo||none||78||municipality consists of an urban area (termed a city or town) plus all of its surrounding barrios comprising the municipality. It has a popularly elected administration and a municipal mayor. The seat of the municipal government is located in such urban area and serves the entire municipal jurisdiction.||Municipalities of Puerto Rico|
|Sweden||kommun||Stockholm Municipality||County Councils of Sweden (Swedish: landsting) self-governing local authority, covering 21 counties, each comprising one or more of the municipalities.||290||is self-governing according to the Swedish constitution and constitutes local government. Before 1971, a municipality could be called a town (stad), a köping or a rural municipality (landskommun); present municipalities which used to be towns are still commonly called towns. Sweden is also divided in 2 523 districts (Swedish: distrikt) since 1 January 2016.||Municipalities of Sweden|
|Look up municipality in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.|