The Municipalities or Kommuner represent the local level of self government in Sweden. Each municipality also belong to one of the 21 Counties of Sweden or Län.

Municipalities can be further divided into boroughs (stadsdelsnämnder or kommundelsnämnder). The existence of such divisions are at the discretion of the municipality itself which also can decide to hold local referendum on whether a borough or part of the municipality should secede and form a separate municipality. However the question of whether a new municipality will at all be created is at the discretion of the Swedish Government.

In the middle of the 20th century several municipal reforms were implemented, which successively and drastically reduced their numbers, to the current 290 municipalities (2004). The last major reform in 1971 abolished the Cities of Sweden as separate administrative entities and made them centers of the new larger municipalities. The cities, most of them with centuries old and in some cases more than 1000 year old traditions, are in spite of this still perceived as cities even if they are no longer in the formal sense, cities as such. Also metropolitan areas, such as Stockholm, are formally municipalities.

The municipalities are also divided into a total of 2,512 parishes, or församlingar (2000), which have an importance for census and elections. There are also a total of 1,936 urban centres, or tätorter (2000), which have an impact on statistics.

Municipal government in Sweden belong to the council-manager government variety.

See also

• List of municipalities of Sweden
• List of municipalities of Sweden by population
• List of municipalities of Sweden by area
• List of municipalities of Sweden by density
• Statistics Sweden

External links

• Swedish Association of Local Authorities - Official site
• Swedish Government - Official site