This paper seeks to explain patterns of central government control and local government discretion across nations as well as across policy areas. The argument is that central-local policy is the result of the interaction of three types of actors: ‘Expenditure advocates’, ‘expenditure guardians’, and ‘topocrats’. The argument is based on two assumptions. First, the actors are assumed to pursue self-interests – respectively, sectoral policy goals, macroeconomic control, and local autonomy. Second, the actors' abilities to pursue their self-interests are assumed to be constrained and facilitated by the structure of intergovernmental policy networks. The theoretical propositions are put to a first test in a comparative analysis of three policy areas (economic policy, health policy, and child care policy) in the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.