This paper aims to analyze as the local governments answer, in the decentralization context of the Brazilian State, to the new demands in order to the implementation and administration of the social policies. One focuses the health policies, where the local sphere is central inside the sectorial reform in course since the early nineties. The text ask the effective capacity of the Brazilian municipal districts exercise, in fact, its autonomy to elaborate and to execute policies, vis-à-vis the Brazilian local political tradition and the inequalities economic, social and regional characteristics of the country. We took the municipal district of São Gonçalo, in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, as analysis locus, looking for measure the impact provoked by the decentralization in the reorganization of the health services system. One consider the composition of the services in terms of the amount and quality, as well as of the reference and against-reference pattern among the attendance levels of the local health system. (One observed that the production of the health policy in that place collides against the limits characterized by the relationship among intrinsic elements to the own organization of the local health system and the way as it conforms to the political power in the municipal district).
Health policy; Decentralization; Local power; Health services organization
