This research aims to establish relations between state capacities and the qual-ity of early childhood education in seventeen municipalities in the State of Rio de Janeiro, in the period between 2014 and 2019. The period is justified by the legal changes in early childhood education, such as compulsory schooling from 4 years of age (BRASIL, 2009b) and the goals of universalization of pre-school and expansion of care in daycare centers provided for in the National Education Plan (BRA-SIL, 2014). With this, the municipalities, constitutionally responsible for this stage, had to elaborate and / or adapt their Municipal Education Plans (PME), integrating goals and strategies with a view to expanding the offer of places in daycare centers, universalizing preschools and ensuring the quality of early childhood education. Considering that the history of early childhood education points out that quality has often been neglected in the expansion process, we question whether municipalities are observing the quality of early childhood education by expanding their municipal school systems and whether the quality of early childhood education is in any way related to municipal state capacities. Thus, we used the literature to select the quality dimensions of early childhood education to be considered - provision of early childhood education, infrastructure and teacher training. Regarding state capacities, we analyzed, in dialogue with Souza (2004; 2020), Pires and Gomide (2016) and Souza and Fontanelli (2020), information related to the performance of municipalities in socioeconomic, demographic and educational indicators. Municipal initia-tives aimed at day care centers and preschools were also investigated, using data from IBGE, PNUD, INEP and a survey directed at municipal education departments, in addition to Municipal Education Plans. The thesis identifies dimensions that can be considered as a proxy for municipal state capacities - human resources, infrastructure and the definition of goals and strategies for expanding the offer of places for children from 0 to 6 years of age present in municipal education plans. It also shows that these capacities vary between municipalities and in the way they seem to affect local educational indicators. Despite the exploratory nature of the research, it was not possible to observe direct relationships between state capacities and the quality of early childhood education, in the municipalities that comprised our sample, it was possible to identify that there are indications that this quality has been observed in a heterogeneous way by municipalities studied.