Municipalities of the Arab Union

Municipalities (Arabic: بلديات baladiyāt; sg. بلدية baladiyah), also known as council areas (مجالات المجلس majālāt al-majlis; sg. مجال المجلس majāl al-majlis) after the local level of government for a municipality called a municipal council (مجلس البلدية majlis al-baladiyah), form the lowest tier of local government in the Arab Union, followed by the 20 republics or organised territories, and finally the Arab Union federal government. Municipalities are responsible for providing virtually all local government services within their district, such as water and sanitation, road and other urban/suburban infrastructure, as well as collecting property taxes and overseeing rental and other housing markets. Municipalities also form the administrative regions into which each republic is divided. Municipalities are commonly grouped together to form statistical regions of a republic, although the Constitution of the Arab Union provides for no level of government higher than the municipalities before the republican level, and any actual multi-municipality, regional services are either agreements between multiple municipalities or regionalised programs of the republican government.

Municipal governments can be one of two forms: mayor–council governments, the more common form, consist of a popularly elected Mayor (عمدة ‘amdah) who appoints fellow party members or other peers to his cabinet, which is known as the Municipal Council (مجلس البلد majlis al-balad); council–manager forms, which account for just under two-fifths of municipal governments in the union, instead have a popularly elected multiple-member Municipal Council, who appoint from amongst themselves a Manager (مدير mudīr) to handle routine executive decisions who is accountable to the Municipal Council. Mayoral/council elections take place every four or five years, depending on the jurisdiction. A mayor can dismiss and re-appoint Municipal Council members, and can himself be removed from office by a two-thirds public referendum of the municipality's constituents. Council–manager municipal governments allow for the Manager's dismissal and replacement by the Municipal Council, which can itself be removed from office by the same referendum process used to remove the Mayor in mayor–council governments; in both forms of government, the removal from office of a mayor/council requires the holding of new municipal elections within two months. In the mayor–council form, the municipal council acts as both the mayor's cabinet and a simplified civil legislative body (capable of both passing and enforcing bylaws), while in the council–manager form, the municipal council is solely legislative, the manager appointing a separate "civic committee" as his own cabinet, which as the executive upholds municipal council-created bylaws.

All urban and semi-urban communities within the 20 republics of the Arab Union are part of one or more municipalities; these are officially named either "cities" (مدن mudun; sing. مدينة madīnah) or "towns" (قرى qurā; sing. قرية qiryah), depending on whether or not the municipality's resident population exceeds 10,000. Many rural communities form geographically large but sparsely populated incorporated municipalities called "townships" (بلدات baldāt; sing. بلدة baldah); the small hamlets of a township are called "villages" (نجوع nujū‘; sing. نجع naj‘), which make up the bulk of a township's population in addition to any farms located in the township. The 20 republics are divided entirely into multiple municipalities, meaning one cannot go anywhere in the 20 republics without being simultaneously in a particular municipality. In organised territories, by contrast, only incorporated areas have municipal status, with some suburban and virtually all rural areas directly accountable and receiving services from the devolved organised territorial government. In the unorganised territories, a municipality cannot be legally incorporated.