Many scarcely populated regions in Sweden and other countries are facing an increasingly difficult situation with regards to supply of public services as well as population development. The population is getting older, the younger parts of the population move to cities and fewer and fewer are left to contribute to the taxbase required for basic services.

The scarcely populated areas are facing new obstacles and many claim that a new form of governance is required in order to tackle the difficulties of the social economies of the peripheral regions. But what is this new form of governance going to look like?

In an ambitious Interreg-project the Norwegian municipalities Røyrvik and Lierne together with parts of two Swedish municipalities, Frostviken and Hotagen, attempts are being made to stop the downward spiral. Out of the 3450 inhabitants in this region 80 are employed full-time or part-time over a three-year period in different part-projects in order to create cross-border solutions to the problems the area is facing. These people in their turn are to involve as many people as possible in the development of the region. It seems to be an example of where the entire social capital of a region is put to work in order to solve the common problems. The involvement of such a large part of the social capital also implicitly means a custom-fitted solution for this very region.

Traditionally it has been popular to talk about the whip and the carrot when talking about incentives. In the case examined in this paper the whip is the situation i.e. something that forced people to act whereas the carrot is the political vision of a positive development. What has been needed in this case, where such a large part of the social capital has been put to work, other than the whip and the carrot is the tambourine, i.e. the ability to co-ordinate, maintaining a good spirit through it all. But a tambourine isn’t something that is just given to you. It’s something you negotiate to get.

Could this involvement of the entire social capital together with the custom-fittedness and the tambourine be the new governance solution for peripheral areas?