Based on a survey in six county councils (départements) in France, this article analyses the county territorialisation policies as strategies of resistance. Indeed, faced with the questioning of the county level for several years, these policies constitute both an internal level for organizational transformation and a means of institutional affirmation. If they are part of a global reform of public administration, these territorialization policies refer to distinct repertoires of public action. The work of county elites then appears by composing different territorialization trajectories according to their ideological anchors and local contexts, but also according to the evolution of centre/periphery relations