Kommunala kapaciteter och strategier för en hållbar kommunal framtid : – fyra positioner med olika handlingsalternativ framåt

In the work of writing this report, four leading municipal research environments - CERUM, CKS, KEFU, and KFi - with the support of Kommuninvest, have collaborated to explore and understand the complex challenges that Swedish municipalities have had to manage during the transition from relatively favorable economic times to more challenging times, including changed economic conditions and a deteriorated geopolitical development. These new conditions bear some similarities but also significant differences with municipal crises experienced over the past two decades. Particularly challenging areas concern decisiveness in a politically and democratically changing time and the ability to build resource capacity for sustainable local community systems.To address these challenges, studies were conducted in eleven Swedish municipalities during the autumn of 2023 and the spring of 2024. The report discusses examples and patterns regarding what these eleven municipalities have done and to what extent strategic choices can be discerned to manage changed economic conditions and strengthen sustainable municipal development.The report is written by the research program's steering group, which also collected the study's empirical material from geographically dispersed municipalities in Sweden, from north to south and from east to west. The material is mainly interpreted in the light of previous empirical research on changed economic conditions and difficult situations for municipalities.