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Based on a survey in six departmental councils in France, this article analyzes departmental territorialization policies as strategies of resistance. Indeed, with the departmental level having been called into question for several years, these policies constitute both an internal lever for organizational transformation and a means of institutional affirmation. While they are part of a wider public administration reform, these territorialization policies are distinct repertoires of public action. Departmental elites work to develop different territorialization policies according to their ideological positions and local contexts, but also according to the evolution of center/periphery relations.