Forces of Policy Change in Compulsory Education: The Swedish Experiment with Local Time Schedules Education has traditionally been viewed as a fundamental task for the modern welfare state, by educating rising generations of citizens. At the same time, under the pressure of globalisation, it has been argued that the role of the state in educational provision has been changing. On the one hand, it is put forward that education policies in different nation-states will become more homogenous (Lingard & Rizvi, 2000). Consequently, claims have been made that European integration will result in more uniform education policy content (Herrera, 2002). On the other hand, a countervailing force is the involvement of local actors in educational policy-making, where an emphasis is put on participation and specific local needs (Hudson & Lidström, 2002). Nonetheless, as Levin (1998, p. 131) put it, an "epidemic of education policy" has spread around the world. To continue Levin's analogy, the symptoms of this epidemic are rather similar: Throughout the industrialised countries, decentralisation (along with, for instance, market-oriented mechanisms) has been an obvious feature of contemporary policymaking, both within the field of education as in other sectors, subsequently also affecting the policy making role of the state. In Sweden, the system of steering education underwent a radical transformation, particularly during the 1990s. In retrospect, one might argue that the changes, especially those of the 1990s, were of a fundamental, rather than incremental, character - Sweden turned from having one of the most centralised education systems to having one of the most decentralised systems (OECD, 2002).This paper centres around one of the most recent Swedish policy initiatives following this far-reaching process of decentralisation: The experiment with local time schedules in compulsory education (LTS). The paper addresses questions of the role of the state in contemporary educational policymaking as well as the initiation and origin of reform ideas. The focus of the paper is on the political forces and arguments underlying initiation of the experiment, and thus not primarily on its outputs and outcomes. The aim is to explore and analyse how the LTS experimental reform came to be initiated and put into force. The analysis takes its point of departure from four theoretical approaches, all offering somewhat different answers to policy change and the role of the state in that process. To what extent can these perspectives provide fruitful ways of approaching the question why the experiment was initiated? The first is historical-institutionalism (Pierson 2000; Peters, 1996; Hall & Taylor, 1996; Thelen & Steinmo, 1992), where path dependent solutions that are coherent with other recent policy decisions are advocated and embraced. Secondly, policy diffusion, where policy ideas and solutions implemented elsewhere are transferred and adopted in a specific national context (Braun & Gilardi, 2006; Messeguer, 2005; Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996). Third, a perception of policy being initiated and implemented bottom-up (Hill & Hupe, 2002; Lipsky, 1980), stressing the role of the educational professionals in policymaking and the state as reactive towards street-level demands. Last, a garbage can (Cohen, March & Olsen, 1972; Kingdon, 1995) understanding of policy as a more haphazard and disorganised undertaking, where chance and accidental circumstances play a dominant role in initiating policy.The empirical material, the analysis mainly draws on, consists of different types of official documents, such as Commission Reports and Government Bills.When applying different theoretical explanations to the same case, strengths and weaknesses of the different perspectives can be brought to the fore. 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