A municipality is usually an urban administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction. The term municipality is also used to mean the governing, ruling body of a 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). A municipality can be any political jurisdiction from a sovereign state, such as the Principality of Monaco, or a small village, such as West Hampton Dunes, New York. The territory over which a municipality has jurisdiction may encompass \n* only one populated place such as a city, town, or village \n* several of such places (e.g., early jurisdictions in the state of New Jersey (1798–1899) as townships governing several villages, Municipalities of Mexico) \n* only parts of such places, sometimes boroughs of a city such as the 34 municipalities of Santiago, Chile.

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