Following Neil Brenner's 3-fold periodization, the article analyses the historical development of the Swedish and the Finnish social assistance systems, from the early phase of Spatial-Keynesianism, through the phase of Endogenous Development Policies, to the present phase of Locational Policies. The Swedish and the Finnish cases have been often clustered in the same welfare regime typology but little investigation has been done on the ways in which the territorial organization of their welfare systems has differently affected their trajectories of development. The article explains how the interrelationship between national and local welfare policies has been firstly established and subsequently evolved in a different manner in the two countries.