Unincorporated area
An unincorporated community is one general term for a geographic area having a common social identity without municipal organization or official political designation (i.e., incorporation as a city or town). There are two main types of unincorporated communities:Due to differences in state laws regarding the incorporation of communities, there is a great variation in the distribution and nature of unincorporated areas. Unincorporated regions are essentially nonexistent in seven of the northeastern states. All of the land in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, and nearly all of the land in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont, is part of an incorporated area of some type. In these areas, types (and official names) of local government entities can vary. In New England (which includes five of those eight states, plus the less fully incorporated state of Maine), local municipalities are known as towns or cities, and most towns are administered by a form of direct democracy, such as the open town meeting or representative town meeting. Larger towns in New England may be incorporated as cities, with some form of mayor-council government. In New Jersey multiple types exist as well, such as city, township, town, borough, or village, but these differences are in the structure of the legislative branches, not in the powers or functions of the entities themselves.
Security community
Deutsch divided security communities into two types: the amalgamated and pluralistic ones. Amalgamated security communities are quite rare in history. They are created when two or more previously independent states form a common government. An example is the United States after the original thirteen colonies ceded much of their governing powers to the federal government. Amalgamation is not always successful and can be overturned, as the failed Union between Sweden and Norway exemplifies. An alternative and less ambitious process is called integration. Integration leads to a pluralistic security community, in which states retain their sovereignty. The United States with Canada is an example of a pluralistic security community. Both countries are politically independent, but they do not expect to have future military confrontations, in spite of having had some in the past. Deutsch argued that the pluralistic security communities are easier to establish and maintain than their amalgamated counterparts.