Abstract
In the late 90's, when Sweden joined EU, it faced to make an adjustment to its regional development policy. As a result, Sweden experienced merger and restructuring of regional governments, along with decentralization in regional development. This article studies the background and reasons of the reform and tries to give an interim evaluation to the ongoing "Regional Experiment," seeking a new form of regional government. The analysis indicates that: 1) as the background of the reform, there was a lack of democracy and efficiency in regional development policy in Sweden, because the non-elected County Administrative Boards had been the main actor; 2) democracy has been improved by decentralizing regional development policy towards the new regional self-governing bodies; and that 3) the effect on efficiency, on the other hand, has not been very clear so far.
