The sharing of public responsibilities between levels of government is a  matter of concern for the authors, since an enumeration of "general" and "local" functions and the ascribing of legal power to perform them reflect the society's configuration of political forces. Therefore, any attempt to reformulate the division of governmental competences, in order to reduce costs and increase benefits, should undoubtedly bring about a redistribution of the real power. After making the reader aware of the importance of this distribution of power and competence between the three levels of government, due to their intima te relationship with the country's social, political and economic development, the authors point out some criticism, as concerns the present sharing of responsibilities. Based on a guiding criterion of scales, they also propose a set of municipal attributions. On the other hand, conscious of the complexity inherent to the problem of state or federal competence, they start looking for such a guiding criterion, founded upon reflection on four governmental functions: health, education, urban services and road transport.