Editing Politics of Brazil (section)

===Municipalities===
{{Main|Municipalities of Brazil}}

[[Image:Vista do Palácio Anchieta.JPG|thumb|left|The [[Municipal Chamber of São Paulo]], the municipal legislature of [[São Paulo]] city]]
[[Image:Palácio do Anhangabaú (Ed. Matarazzo) 01.JPG|thumb|[[Palácio do Anhangabaú]] holds the municipal executive power of [[São Paulo]].]]

Brazil has no clear distinction between ''towns'' and ''cities'' (in effect, the Portuguese word ''cidade'' means both). The only possible difference is regarding the municipalities that have a court of first instance and those that do not. The former are called ''Sedes de Comarca'' (seats of a ''comarca'', which is the territory under the rule of that court). Other than that, only size and importance differs one from another.

The municipality (''município'') is a territory comprising one urban area, the ''sede'' (seat), from which it takes the name, and several other minor urban or rural areas, the ''distritos'' (districts). The seat of a municipality must be the most populous urban area within it; when another urban area grows too much it usually splits from the original municipality to form another one.

A municipality is relatively autonomous: it enacts its own "constitution", which is called ''organic law'' (''Lei Orgânica''), and it is allowed to collect taxes and fees, to maintain a municipal police force (albeit with very restricted powers), to pass laws on any matter that do not contradict either the state or the national constitutions, and to create symbols for itself (like a flag, an anthem and a coat-of-arms). However, not all municipalities exercise all of this autonomy. For instance, only a few municipalities keep local police forces, some of them do not collect some taxes (to attract investors or residents) and many of them do not have a flag (although they are all required to have a coat-of-arms).

Municipalities are governed by an elected ''prefeito'' ([[Mayor]]) and a unicameral ''Câmara de Vereadores'' (Councillors' Chamber). In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters, the Mayor must be elected by more than 50% of the valid vote. The executive power is called ''Prefeitura''.

Brazilian municipalities can vary widely in area and population. The municipality of [[Altamira, Brazil|Altamira]], in the State of [[Pará]], with 161,445.9 square kilometres of area, is larger than many countries in the world. Several Brazilian municipalities have over 1,000,000 inhabitants, with São Paulo, at more than 9,000,000, being the most populous.

Until 1974 Brazil had one state-level municipality, the [[State of Guanabara]], now merged with [[Rio de Janeiro (state)|the State of Rio de Janeiro]], which comprised [[Rio de Janeiro (city)|the city of Rio de Janeiro]] solely.