Subdivisions of Switzerland difficulties maintaining the civil services they need to perform the duties they are required to do. In an effort to reduce expenses, many municipalities are combining together (through mergers or the creation of special-purpose districts). This restructuring is generally encouraged by the cantonal governments and the rate of these unions is increasing. "Cities" ("villes" or "Städte") are the municipalities with more than 10'000 inhabitants or smaller places which had medieval town rights. There is no specific designation for smaller communities such as "village" or "town". Some subdivisions that exist are: Subdivisions of Switzerland The Swiss Confederation comprises the 26 cantons
Cantons of Switzerland Swiss Federal Constitution of 1999 by being joined to their other "half" with the conjunction "and": In contrast, the first article of the 1848 and 1874 constitutions constituted the Confederation as the union of "twenty-two sovereign cantons", referring to the half-cantons as "Unterwalden ( [‘above and beneath the woods’])", "Basel ( [‘city and country’])" and "Appenzell ( [‘both Rhoden’])". The 1999 constitutional revision retained this distinction, on the request of the six cantonal governments, as a way to mark the historic association of the half-cantons to each other. While the older constitutions referred to these states as "half-cantons", a term