Place-based policies for the periphery? Policies for local development in sparsely populated areas in northern Sweden

Josefina Syssner and Gissur Ó Erlingsson

Local Economy, 2023, vol. 38, issue 8, 794-803

Abstract: If a local government receives unconditional funding to design and implement a local development policy, what does it do? This quasi-experimental situation occurred in 2018 when the Swedish government started to allocate 70 million SEK per year to 39 municipalities in the most sparsely populated rural north of the country. The funds' purpose was to support local development initiatives, but they were unconditional and came without specific requirements. Against this backdrop, we analyse how local governments define and address problems related to local economic development, the solutions they develop to address these problems, and the analytical and normative frameworks that guide their decisions. We contrast the identified frameworks with the contemporary literature on place-based policy and planning to determine whether, and to what extent, local economic development policy in rural Sweden reflects the idea that policy and planning should take place-based conditions into account.

Keywords: local development; place-based policy; periphery; analytical and normative frameworks; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:loceco:v:38:y:2023:i:8:p:794-803

DOI: 10.1177/02690942241275950

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