Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A municipality is primarily an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also mean the governing body of a municipality. In most countries, a municipality is the smallest administrative subdivision to have democratically elected representation . Municipalities are sometimes referred to as "communes" (for example, French commune, Spanish comuna, Italian comune, Romanian comun , Swedish kommun and Norwegian/Danish kommune). The term derives from the medieval commune.