POLITICAL POSITION · DIMENSION 1 OF 12
State structure is the dimension that records how a person prefers political power to be divided between the central government and regional and local governments.
State structure is the dimension that records how a person prefers political power to be divided between the central government and regional and local governments. At the Federal pole, states and municipalities have their own powers, their own revenue and autonomy to decide; at the Unitary pole, decisions and rules are concentrated in the central government, and local levels carry out what it defines.
Decisions close to the people affected, room for each region to test what works and a check on concentration of power. Common argument for it: different regions need different rules, and comparing governments shows what works.
The same rules across the whole territory, coordination and economies of scale. Common argument for it: rights and services should not depend on where a person lives.
The Evidence instrument (schema evidence-pol-1) records this dimension as a number from 0 to 100: 0 is the Federal pole, 100 is the Unitary pole. The number comes from your answers to the questionnaire or from a result imported from another instrument by URL; either way it is a self-assessment, computed in your browser, and nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you. With no answer for this dimension, it stays unknown (UNKNOWN), never 50.
| No. | Statement | Agreeing points to |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | States and municipalities should have more autonomy to set their own rules on education and health, even if that creates differences between regions. | Federal |
| 13 | Single national rules are better than different rules in each state, because they guarantee the same rights across the country. | Unitary |
| 25 | Most taxes should be collected and spent by local governments, closer to those who pay them. | Federal |
| 37 | When a state government cannot solve a serious problem, the central government should be able to take over its management. | Unitary |
Formula p = (resposta - 1) / 4 if agreeing points to Unitary; p = 1 - (resposta - 1) / 4 if it points to Federal; placar = 100 * media(p)
There are 4 original statements, with opposite directions to reduce the effect of agreeing with everything. Answers run from 1 to 5 (1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neither agree nor disagree, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree); "Don't know" does not score. Each answer becomes a position between 0 and 1, the score is the mean position times 100, and confidence combines coverage (how many of the 4 statements scored) and consistency (how far answers point the same way): high from 0.75, medium from 0.50.
In the Evidence portable format, this dimension is the federalism parameter of the profile URL. Scale, evidence states and limitations are in the instrument method; the terms are in the glossary.
It is not the same as Representation: a country can be federal and authoritarian, or unitary and democratic, like France and Portugal, which are unitary and hold competitive elections. Nor is it State power: the question here is where power sits, not how much power the State has over a person.
Compare with Representation and State power.
The 1988 Constitution organizes Brazil as a federation formed by the Union, the states, the Federal District and the municipalities (arts. 1 and 18). The dimension does not measure the country: it records the preference of the person answering about how much power each level of government should hold.
No. This dimension is about where decisions are made. Who chooses the rulers and how they are held to account belongs to the Representation dimension, which is read separately.
That the answers ended halfway between Federal and Unitary, through balance or through a mix of answers in both directions. It is not the same as moderation or the political center, and it says nothing about the other 11 dimensions.
No. The computation runs in your browser, nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you, and the result page is not indexed by search engines. Political opinion is sensitive personal data under Brazil's LGPD (art. 5, II, and art. 11).
Reference readings on the topic. None of them validates the Evidence instrument, and no text, question or weight was copied from them.
Where decisions sit: spread across states and municipalities (federal) or concentrated in the central government (unitary).