Efforts to achieve greater decentralization, deregulation, and management by objectives in the public sector have left an indelible mark on the school sector in Sweden during the 1980s. The experimental scheme of local agencies and free municipalities illustrates two such reforms. Under the free municipality experiment, a number of municipalities and county councils can, for a three-year experimental period, be exempted from certain state regulations governing local activities. This decentralization has been undertaken with particular ends in view: better adjustment to local needs, integration of schools with other municipal activities, more efficient school administration, and a greater measure of influence for politicians and users. Results show that the introduction of local agencies has done little to bring schools closer to the national goals of decentralization. Hopes of making municipal school districts more efficient and less expensive were not realized, due to conflicts of authority between state and municipality that resulted in more, not less, bureaucratic complexity. (TE)