What is the difference between landsting and länsstyrelse?

Question

In Sweden, there appear to be two parallel national subdivisions with the same boundaries. For example, see Länsstyrelsen i Norrbotten and Norrbottens läns landsting. The same appears in other counties. What is the difference between the two?

Answer 1

Those are indeed two completely different things that only happen to be responsible (in different administrative fields) for the same geographical area.

The länssstyrelse is an agency of the Swedish national government, which also appoints the director (landshövding). It is the main representative of the national government in a province (län) and coordinates the work of central agencies there, as well as having a number of responsibilities itself. Details can be found (in Swedish) in the ordinance defining the role of the länsstyrelse, SFS 2007:825.

The landsting, on the other hand, is a political entity (technically a special type of municipality comprising the area of several regular municipalities; a so-called secondary municipality, sekundärkommun). The citizens of a landsting elect a regional parliament, landstingsfullmäktige, which in turn elects a regional government, landstingsstyrelse. The landsting’s main areas of responsibility are health care, regional public transport and land use planning.

Sweden has been experimenting with devolution for a while, and in this process, a number of landsting have received extended responsibilities. Such a landsting is usually called region (having a regionfullmäktige and a regionstyrelse).

It is not strictly necessary that a landsting coincides geographically with a province, and there have been exceptions in the past. – The province of Gotland only contains a single municipality, which also fulfills the functions of a landsting and is called region Gotland.