Kien-k'ang Council
The Kien-k'ang Council (Shinasthana: 建康斅, kyen-k'ang-gruk) was the body responsible for the municipal administration of Kien-k'ang between 1841 and 1983. It was formed in two stages: first, in 1837, the aldermen of the city's civil parishes (里) were ordered to assemble regularly to discuss matters of public interest, and then in 1841, the Kien-k'ang Senate (邑長老), which was a hereditary body with plenary functions, had its judicial authority transferred to the Grand Jury of Kien-k'ang. The resulting organization had a bicameral structure with some powers particular to each body and others exercised jointly.
The Council's powers are defined by both statutory and traditional bounds, the most general being the Kien-k'ang Council Act of 1857, which was modified several times. Over the years of its existence, which saw enormous expansions in government service, it created offices relating to education, sanitation, transport, public welfare, and other genera, to discharge its resolutions. It also elected an Executive Committee to supervise the execution of its resolutions and the normal activities of its bureaucracy.
It has been suggested that the Council has a legacy tainted by corruption and inequality in several ways. The most notable of which, perhaps, was chronic underrepresentation of the city's suburbs, which by 1980 represented 72% of the city's population but elected only 22% of its aldermen and none of its senators. The standard practice was that new towns annexed to the Kien-k'ang Council—the standard terminology was "to annex"—received two seats in the Board of Aldermen regardless of population, while unincorporated areas received no representation, though most of the city's new developments after the Pan-Septentrion War occcurred in unincorporated areas.
Jurisdiction
The Kien-k'ang Council's jurisdiction is a complicated matter as it was not purely a geographic border that defined its authority. The Times of Themiclesia has remarked that the Council had certain interests and functions "in the other side of the country". While it held some powers over the entire Metropolitan City of Kien-k'ang, which was created in 1962 following the annexation of 9 towns and 15 counties of the Exchequer Province, these towns and counties remained legal entities with their own authorities, appropriations, and bureaucracies. As the terminology of annexation suggests, the Kien-k'ang Council obtained some functions within the jurisdictions of these entities but did not replace them completely.
The entire territory of the Metropolitan City is measured as 9,077 km², which the Council divided into five general regions: the city, the superior woods,