Municipalities of Sweden

The municipalities of Sweden (Swedish: Sveriges kommuner) are its lower-level local government entities. There are 290 municipalities which are responsible for a large proportion of local services, including schools, emergency services and physical planning.

The Local Government Act of 1991 specifies several responsibilities for the municipalities, and provides outlines for local government, such as the process for electing the municipal assembly. It also regulates a process (laglighetsprövning, "legality trial") through which any citizen can appeal the decisions of a local government to a county court.

Municipal government in Sweden is similar to city commission government and cabinet-style council government. A legislative municipal assembly (kommunfullmäktige) of between 31 and 101 members (always an odd number) is elected from party-list proportional representation at municipal elections, held every four years in conjunction with the national general elections. The assembly in turn appoints a municipal executive committee (kommunstyrelse) from its members. The executive committee is headed by its chairman, (Swedish: kommunstyrelsens ordförande). The chairman is often referred as Municipal Commissioner (Swedish: kommunalråd).

The first local government acts were implemented on January 1, 1863. There were two acts, one for the cities and one for the countryside. The total number of municipalities was about 2,500. The rural municipalities were based on the old parishes (socknar) and the then 89 cities/towns (städer) (which is the same in Swedish) were based on the old chartered cities. There was also a third type, köping or market town. The status of these was somewhere between the rural municipalities and the cities. There were only eight of them in 1863, rising to a peak of 96 in 1959.

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