Norway has been the second country in Europe to introduce an extensive market reform of its electricity supply. Sweden has followed rather swiftly with a political commitment to a liberal electricity reform, which, however, has taken longer to be implemented. The reform policies imply a dramatic departure from traditional governance regimes. Nevertheless the Norwegian electricity law passed with only limited opposition in Parliament and the radical free trade oriented White Paper was likewise passed in Sweden. This article investigates how the actors' roles, both in the Norwegian and Swedish reform process, were shaped by limitations embedded in their conceptualization of the issue and their expectations of outcomes rather than by rational expectations formed in the light of full information. On this basis the paper argues that cognitive limitations in the policy making process play a major role in explaining the extensive consensus between apparently contradictory interests in both the Norwegian and the Swedish case.