Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms in Europe andbeyond have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies andreplace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasiseparental choice and competition between diversified types ofschools. Despite this general trend, Finland continues to empha-sise the municipal assignment of school places, albeit with thepossibility of locally controlled choice. The aim of this paper is toelaborate on the ways in which Finnish local education authorities–involving both officials and politicians–define themselves inrelation to the changing conceptions of the Nordic welfare statemodel. The paper discusses the social costs and benefits of schoolchoice in addition to the kinds of techniques these authorities usewhen aiming to control and manage the social costs and benefitsof school choice. Based on nine in-depth thematic interviews withlocal education authorities, the modalities–having to, being-able,wanting and knowing how–will be analysed.