The periphery has traditionally had a strong position in the Norwegian polity. From the 1990s, the periphery and its institutional underpinnings, especially the county councils, have been put onto the defensive. Why is this happening? And how is the likely pattern of regional governance going to look? Our main argument is that the region-building forces are facing an uphill struggle against a fundamental transformation of the Norwegian periphery and a concomitant change of the Norwegian state into a financial giant. In combination, these two features drive a classic 'revolution of rising expectations' that undercuts the position of the county councils and possibly also that of future enlarged regions. An ever more centralised state is not an unlikely course of development for the Norwegian polity. Europeanisation and identity politics may work in favour of a New Regionalism that involves cities as actors in regional governance more than has been the case hitherto.