ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a clearer description of the reform process in terms of negotiation and persuasion. It presents a constructivistic frame of reference, emphasising the importance of symbols and rhetoric if the process of reform work is to be understood. Reformatory work as the creator of a regional organisation is thus seen as a rhetoric project. The rhetoric surrounding a West Sweden region has strengthened the regional discourse into a closely woven unit. Therefore, creating a region is not a thing that the actors can simply choose or even deny because now the concept of the region structures what is possible. Many Swedish researchers describe the Swedish public sector as undergoing a reality crisis, consisting of different sorts of crises: economy, efficiency, identity. To say that a West Sweden region is a strategic construction is to say that a region is created in a process where the region is a product of history and not an independent entity.
