Once again there is public debate on regional reforms in Sweden. In the current Conservative-Liberal Swedish government, the ball in this debate rests firmly in the court of the Conservatives. The Conservatives would however prefer the responsibilities of the university hospitals to be centralised rather than regionalised (as proposed in the 2007 White Paper). The other members of the government coalition are however ardent supporters of strong regions, and are proponents of regional reforms as long as the new geography is based on local and regional political initiatives.
At the Moderaterna (Conservative) party congress in September 2007, an overwhelming majority opposed the establishment of a new regional structure during the current parliamentary period, which runs until 2010. Instead, they decided to mandate that the regional reform proposal should be put up as an issue for the forthcoming 2010 elections. The other members of the current government alliance are not however as insistent that the electorate need to have a say on the eventual regional reform proposals. As such then, 2008 looks likely to be a year of simply 'muddling through' before the run up to the 2010 general election campaign starts in earnest.
In January 2007 the Swedish government was presented with a White Paper outlining a proposal for a new regional administrative structure. The proposed criteria for the new regions were that:
• The total number of regions should be somewhere between six and nine, with no region having less than half a million inhabitants
• Each new region should host a uni-versity and a university hospital
• The new regions should be delimited by functional labour markets
In June 2007 the government appointed a special coordinator, with the task of being a sparring partner for the current regions (landsting) in their evaluation of the regionalisation proposal. The coordinator will present a final assessment of the regionalisation process to the government by the summer of 2008.
The coordinator has surveyed local and regional attitudes to the proposed reform among some 500 respondents (institut-ional and organisational), and found that an overwhelming majority of the municipalities and the landsting – in excess of 90 per cent - support the main reform issues: the establishment of new, larger administrative regions and a coordination of the territorial organ-isation of state agencies. The regional-isation debate has thus been boosted by this bottom-up process.
At the regional level, politicians and administrators seem eager to follow in the footsteps of Skåne and Västra Götaland. Those regional parliaments (landsting) that have already debated the issue have almost uniformly supported the reforms, and have provided their own proposals on the future shape of Sweden's new regional geography. Of the counties who have already gone through this consultation process only Halland and Jönköping have proved hesitant in respect of the proposed new geographies, preferring instead the status quo in their part of Southern Sweden.
Status quo also characterises the Norwegian debate on regional and administrative reforms. In late February 2008, the Norwegian government announced that the proposal for a new regional geography in Norway – establishing larger administrative regions - has effectively been called off. The current counties will however remain free to merge in the future - but then on a strictly voluntary basis.
Based on the responses received in relation to the original reform proposal from the counties and municipalities themselves during late 2007 and early 2008, the Norwegian Ministry of Municipalities and Regions issued a new background document which has been submitted for a public hearing process with an April 2008 response deadline.
By Jon M. Steineke, previous Research Fellow at Nordregio