This paper examines the promulgation of constitutions by non-Muslim communities in the late Ottoman Empire, focusing on the case of the Orthodox Christian (Rum) community and the “General Regulations” which they issued in 1862. The examination aims for an assessment of the issues of representation and citizenship in a modernizing multi-national empire. Exploring the changes in the legal/administrative basis of the Rum community, the paper seeks to understand the evolution in the internal dynamics of the community and its relationship with the Ottoman state in the mid 19th century. The General Regulations were both the result of the Tanzimat project of the Ottoman state setting forth a reorganization of imperial administration and the culmination of power struggles among communal leaders, both lay and ecclesiastical. The Regulations set forth new forms of communal administrative institutions and new ways of representation in and of the community. More specifically, this paper dwells on the characteristics and components of this constitutive text and combines an examination of its guiding elements with what was happening on the ground in terms of the local organization of communal authority and the development of internal communal dynamics. Concentrating on cases from various towns of Anatolia, the presentation juxtaposes administrative developments with practical realities such as the strengthening of the new middle classes and the consolidation of the koinotita as a local administrative institution.