States, as federal regions, are passing through many transformations around the world. The municipal level, particularly, has been object of much attention due to the growth and diffusion of decentralized practices of governance, some of which are characterized as a forced redesign of the State in response to crisis situations. In line with these observations, governments should be showing a whole range of innovative alternatives and solutions to perform their new roles. Health, education, employment, income and local development policies should become increasingly decentralized. One of the objectives of this paper is to contribute to the critical understanding of this process. In order to achieve this, the correlation between fourteen social development indicators and twelve economic development indicators for all of the 415 municipal districts in the state of Bahia are checked. From these results, some discussion is made about the role of state and municipal levels of public administration, suggesting a differentiated state policy in accordance with the individual indicators of each municipal group. (to be developed from the mentioned correlation.)