ABSTRACT
Sweden represents, together with its Nordic neighbours, a very particular case of a welfare regime as well as local government system. In the Scandinavian or social democratic welfare model (Esping-Andersen 1990), welfare services are provided by the public sector rather than families, voluntary associations or the market. And in the public sector it is local government that is the almost completely dominant service provider. This might point to a basic contradiction, as the social democratic welfare state emphasises uniformity while local self-government is a matter of differences. In this contribution we first describe and analyse the functions and competencies of municipalities. This account ends by concluding that the developments of the late twentieth century have further strengthened the position of local government as service provider. New public tasks have often been allocated to local government, and reallocations of functions have strengthened local government at the expense of central government and, within the local government sector, municipalities at the expense of county councils.
