Local government in the Arab Union

In the Union of Arab Republics (UAR), informally known as the Arab Union, local government (Arabic: الحكم المحلّي al-ḥikm al-maḥallī) occupies the third and lowest tier of public administration.

The union as a whole (and its federal government) shares sovereignty with each of the 20 federated republics; the Constitution of the Arab Union delineates the respective powers and areas of jurisdiction unique to the federal or republican level of government. For example, the nation's single-payer universal healthcare system is administered entirely by the federal government, while the great majority of law enforcement and the administration of justice is the responsibility of the republics.

The constitution provides for the organisation of local government in the Arab Union and sets out the responsibilities and areas of jurisdiction of local government versus the republican and federal levels of government. As such, local government takes the same form across all republics: Each republic is divided into multiple municipalities (بلديات baladiyãt; sg. بلدية baladiyah), each consisting of at least one inhabited settlement as well as all surrounding land not part of any adjacent municipality. By this system, no community in the Arab Union is without municipal services, as all are part of a particular incorporated municipality; there are no unincorporated areas in any of the 20 republics, meaning that all locales in the Arab Union form part of a particular municipality.

A municipality can be officially incorporated as one of four types: borough (قصبة qaṣbah), city (مدينة madīnah), town (قرية qiryah) or township (بلدة baldah); all four types are administratively identical, their distinction being population density. Boroughs represent the most densely populated areas; if a large city consists of more than one municipality, these municipalities will be incorporated as boroughs, while a municipality encompassing most or all a city (possibly excluding suburbs) will be incorporated as a city. Surrounding suburbs and commuter towns of large cities–defined as communities forming part of uninterrupted urban sprawl radiating from an urban centre–can themselves be incorporated as cities if they are mostly urban, but are commonly suburban in character and thus incorporated as towns. Municipalities not forming part of a larger metropolitan area, which consist of a single, low-density community occupying most of the municipal boundaries, are typically also incorporated as towns, whereas entirely or mostly rural municipalities (typically including farmland possibly punctuated by one or more villages or hamlets) are incorporated as townships.

Municipalities have a formal name using the officially incorporated designation–for example, Cairo is incorporated as three separate municipalities: the Borough of Garden City, Borough of Heliopolis and Borough of Mansheya, while neighbouring Giza, a city in its own right forming a central part of the Cairo Metropolitan Area, is incorporated as a single municipality (the City of Giza). Jerusalem is also incorporated as a single municipality (the City of Jerusalem), the more urban and dense municipalities surrounding Jerusalem as part of its metropolitan area are also incorporated as cities, such as the City of Ramallah, while its less dense suburbs are mostly incorporated as towns (such as the Town of Bethlehem). Finally, typically for rural communities, the Township of Sheikh Ahmad in Syria is a single municipality of about 95 km2 which consists of nine individual villages/hamlets and surrouding farmland; the township gets its name from its most populous village/hamlet, where the municipal council is based.

Municipal governments can be one of two types: a mayor–council government, the more common type, consists of a popularly elected mayor who appoints from amongst his party/coalition or peer group a cabinet, formally called the "Municipal Council" (مجلس البلدية majlis al-baladiyah), which oversees all executive and administrative responsibilities of the municipality; the less common type is the council–manager government, which consists of a popularly elected Municipal Council responsible for formulating municipal policy and supervising the municipality's executive agencies, as well as appointing a professional manager to handle daily executive decisions, similar to a mayor but answerable to the Municipal Council rather than vice versa. In both types, municipal governments can be dissolved and new municipal elections called by a two-thirds' majority in a public referendum. Public referenda may also be used to change the form of municipal government from one type to the other. As of 2020, the ratio of mayor–council governments to council–manager governments was roughly 10:3, making the mayor–council form just over three times as common as the council–manager form.