City-state
A city-state is a country consisting of (a part of) a city and usually some additional territory, such as that surrounding the city. The most known may be the "polis" of Ancient Greece and the city of Ancient Rome, which started as a city-state, but other city-states have also existed. The small size of the community in some cases contributed to democratic forms of government, sometimes even to direct democracy methods. Some cities that are constituent states in a federation, and as such can be accurately described as non-sovereign city-states, examples are Austria: Vienna; Germany: Bremen, Berlin and Hamburg; Switzerland: Basel-Stadt.
