The Federal Republic of Germany is a federation and consists of sixteen partly sovereign "states". Of the 16 states, 13 are so-called "area-states" ; in these, below the level of the state government, there is a division into local authorities that have their own administration. Two states, Berlin and Hamburg, are city-states, in which there is no separation between state government and local administration. The state of Bremen is a special case: the state consists of the cities of Bremen, for which the state government also serves as the municipal administration, and Bremerhaven, which has its own local administration separate from the state government. It is therefore a mixture of a city-state and an area-state. Three states, Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia, use the appellation Freistaat ; this title is merely stylistic and carries no legal or political significance.