Local government in the United States in the context of "Second Amendment to the United States Constitution"

A charter township is a form of local government in the U.S. state of Michigan. While all townships in Michigan are organized governments, a charter township has been granted a charter, which allows it certain rights and responsibilities of home rule that are generally intermediate between those of a city (a semi-autonomous jurisdiction in Michigan) and a village. Unless it is a home-rule village, a village is subject to the authority of any township in which it is located.

Of Michigan's 1,240 townships, 143 are charter townships. A number of charter townships are among the most populous municipalities in Michigan. For example, Clinton Township and Canton Township, both in Metro Detroit, were respectively the 8th and 9th most populous municipalities in Michigan at the 2020 census. The most recent township to become a charter township is Brady Township in Kalamazoo County, which adopted charter status on January 3, 2024.

In the United States, a county or county equivalent is an administrative subdivision of a state or territory, typically with defined geographic boundaries and some level of governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 states, while Louisiana and Alaska have functionally equivalent subdivisions called parishes and boroughs, respectively. Counties and other local governments exist as a matter of U.S. state law, so the specific governmental powers of counties may vary widely between the states, with many providing some level of services to civil townships, municipalities, and unincorporated areas. Certain municipalities are in multiple counties. Some municipalities have been consolidated with their county government to form consolidated city-counties or have been legally separated from counties altogether to form independent cities. Conversely, counties in Connecticut and Rhode Island, eight of Massachusetts's 14 counties, and Alaska's Unorganized Borough have no government power, existing only as geographic distinctions.

The United States Census Bureau uses the term "county equivalent" to describe places that are comparable to counties, but called by different names. Louisiana parishes, the organized boroughs of Alaska, independent cities, and the District of Columbia are equivalent to counties for administrative purposes. Alaska's Unorganized Borough is further divided into 11 census areas that are statistically equivalent to counties. In 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau began to also recognize Connecticut's councils of governments, which took over some of the regional powers from the state's former county governments, as county equivalents.

In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders, such as paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who share child custody.

State governments in the U.S. are allocated power by the people of each respective state through their individual state constitutions. All are grounded in republican principles (this being required by the federal constitution), and each provides for a government, consisting of three branches, each with separate and independent powers: executive, legislative, and judicial. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, and states also create other local governments.

A mayor–council government is a system of local government in which a mayor who is directly elected by the voters acts as chief executive, while a separately elected city council constitutes the legislative body. It is one of the two most common forms of local government in the United States, and is the form most frequently adopted in large cities, although the other common form, council–manager government, is the local government form of more municipalities.

Pueblo is a term primarily used in Puerto Rico to refer to the municipal district (barrio) that serves as the administrative, historic and cultural center of a municipality. The concept of pueblo is often used locally as analogous to the concept of downtown in U.S. cities. Pueblos are officially called barrio-pueblo by the United States Census since 1990.

The following is a list of incorporated places in the United States with a population density of over 10,000 people per square mile. As defined by the United States Census Bureau, an incorporated place is a place that has a self-governing local government and as such has been "incorporated" by the state it is in. Each state has different laws defining how a place can be incorporated. An "incorporated place" as recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau can designate a variety of places, such as a city, town, village, borough, and township.

The state of Michigan is largely divided in the same way as many other U.S. states, but is distinct in its usage of charter townships. Michigan ranks 13th among the fifty states in terms of the number of local governmental entities.

The state is divided into 83 counties, and further divided into 1,240 townships, 280 cities, and 253 villages. Additionally, the state consists of 553 school districts, 57 intermediate school districts, 14 planning and development regions, and over 300 special districts and authorities.

A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a county, most often in the northern and midwestern parts of the country. The term town is used in New England, New York, as well as Wisconsin to refer to the equivalent of the civil township in these states; Minnesota uses "town" officially but often uses it and "township" interchangeably. Specific responsibilities and the degree of autonomy vary in each state. Civil townships are distinct from survey townships, but in states that have both, the boundaries often coincide, especially in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, and may completely geographically subdivide a county. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies civil townships as minor civil divisions. Currently, there are 20 states with civil townships, including Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia (in certain areas).

Township functions are generally overseen by a governing board (the name varies from state to state) and a clerk, trustee, or mayor (in New Jersey and the metro townships of Utah). Township officers frequently include justice of the peace, road commissioner, assessor, and constable, in addition to surveyor. In the 20th century, many townships also added a township administrator or supervisor to the officers as an executive for the board. In some cases, townships run local libraries, senior citizen services, youth services, disabled citizen services, and cemetery services, besides emergency assistance. In some states, a township and a municipality that is coterminous with that township may wholly or partially consolidate their operations.

In United States local government, a consolidated city-county (see below for alternative terms) is formed when one or more cities and their surrounding county (parish in Louisiana, borough in Alaska) merge into one unified jurisdiction. As such it is a type of unitary authority that has the governmental powers of both a municipal corporation and a county.

A consolidated city-county is different from an independent city, although the latter may result from consolidation of a city and a county and may also have the same powers as a consolidated city-county. An independent city is a city not deemed by its state to be located within the boundary of any county and considered a primary administrative division of its state. A consolidated city-county differs from an independent city in that the city and county both nominally exist, although they have a consolidated government, whereas in an independent city, the county does not even nominally exist. Furthermore, a consolidated city-county may still contain independent municipalities maintaining some governmental powers that did not merge with the rest of the county.