ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s, the Swedish school system has also been highly decentralized, meaning that the main responsibility to provide education was from now on handed over from the state to the municipalities. Previously, the Swedish school system had been one the most centralized and regulated systems in the world. However, in the 1990s, the system changed when the municipalities took over responsibility for providing education. In this chapter, we interrogate and problematize how local political actors in three mid-sized cities talk about and understand the free school choice and the relations between public and independent schools. Based on interviews with politicians, from left to right, as well as municipal officials working with education, we highlight that there is not one way of talking about and understanding these issues, but several. However, among the interviewees, there is a line of argument that is particularly recurring, and that is that issues concerning free school choice and the relations between public and independent schools are of great importance for the local political arena. In fact, free school choice and independent schools do in several ways matter a great deal for the local politics. It produces effects that have to be dealt with in the everyday life of governing education. Paradoxically, the more controversial undertones of these issues tend to be excluded and silenced when addressed in the context of local politics.
