Republics of the Arab Union

The Union of Arab Republics (UAR; informally the Arab Union) is a federal republic in North Africa and Western Asia which consists of twenty federated states, called republics (Arabic: جمهوريات jumhūriyāt), officially Arab republics (جمهوريات عربية jumhūriyāt ʿarabīyah).

According to the Constitution of the Arab Union, the twenty republics are coequal and share sovereignty with the government of the Arab Union; they are administered by state governments officially known as governorates, each led by a governor and responsible for the domestic affairs of its respective republic (with the exception of certain areas like healthcare and public security). While each republic has its own head of government (the governor), distinct from the all-union head of government (the Prime Minister), the popularly elected President of the Arab Union is constitutionally the head of state of the union as a whole as well as each republic.

The republics constitute the first-level administrative divisions of the Arab Union; additionally, the Arab Union includes one autonomous region and a federal capital district, which unlike the republics do not share sovereignty with the federal government, practicing a level of autonomy similar to republics but at the pleasure of the federal government rather than via constitutional guarantee (see devolution.

List

 * Algerian Arab Republic
 * Bahraini Arab Republic
 * Egyptian Arab Republic
 * Gulf Arab Republic
 * Iraqi Arab Republic
 * Jordanian Arab Republic
 * Kuwaiti Arab Republic
 * Lebanese Arab Republic
 * Libyan Arab Republic
 * Mauritanian Arab Republic
 * Moroccan Arab Republic
 * Omani Arab Republic
 * Palestinian Arab Republic
 * Peninsular Arab Republic
 * Qatari Arab Republic
 * Sudanese Arab Republic
 * Syrian Arab Republic
 * Tunisian Arab Republic
 * Western Saharan Arab Republic
 * Yemeni Arab Republic

Potential ambiguity
The term's definitive singular form, whether proper or not ("the Republic" vs. "the republic", which by default is more ambiguous in this case as unlike the English language, written Arabic lacks the capital vs. lower case distinction found in the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts), always refers to a particular republic regardless of context (with context determining only which republic is being discussed, the only possible variations being discussion of a foreign republic or discourse on republics/republicanism as a concept, as opposed to referral to a specific entity), and never to the Arab Union as a whole (despite being a republic in and of itself and independently of its organisation as a unitary state or federation), which is always referred to idealistically as "the Union" (الاتحاد al-ittiḥād).

So too with the dual and plural forms of "republic", regardless of this observation's insignificance. In the dual or plural, the only difference would lie in that, as more than one republic is being discussed, the possibility of the context being conceptual can be ruled out.

For example, in the third sentence of the preamble to the Constitution of the Arab Union, "republic" appears in both the definite and indefinite singular: "We bind ourselves [as] one … so the Republic should never find cause … [to] ride or be rode [upon] in malice of a [fellow] republic." In the same preamble, the fifth sentence reads: "Therefore [and] thereby, we … bind [ourselves] before God … as a single union of many republics, affirming before God and all [witnesses] the Union as our homeland." Compare with the referral to an indivisible United States as "the Republic" in the preamble to that country's constitution.