Municipalities: Actors of Change in Regional Development?

• Comparative case study of 3 types of regions in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. • Regional types are small and peripheral, entrepreneurial and regional centres. • Identifies conditions at regional & national level impacting municipalities’ agency. • Local governments are important for bringing EU closer to citizens. • Identifies the need to clarify mandates of municipalities in place-based approaches. Even though place is associated with the local, place-based policy approaches typically target the regional level of government. Addressing this spatial mismatch, this paper focuses on the local level studying municipalities’ regional development work in different types of regions in three Nordic countries. Through a comparative study across regional and national contexts, the paper identifies the need to clarify the mandates of municipalities in place-based approaches. The results unveil the uneven capabilities, and national and regional structural constraints of municipalities which impacts their place-based regional development work.