To govern with public policies At the end of the eighties, elected officials of the french middle size towns were involved in the development of higher education for their territories. In France, this strange marriage between middle size towns and University is revealing a decentralization process of the French State and the strenght of local governance, based on a principle of 'governing by action', a political legitimization based on entrepreneurship. Three monographies were realised for the Phd: La Rochelle in the west, Albi and Rodez in south-west. The first part reconstitutes the history of higher education policies at the town's level. The second part proposes a comparative analysis. The local public actors are three times put to the test: from the point of view of their territorial legitimacy, in their capacity to build varied alliances with the central State, with others local collectivities and with universities and academics and in their adaptability to "territorialize" their policy which means that the profil of their territory matters in the local governance and in the capacity to govern. A pragmatic model of territorialized governance is finally established. It supposes to consider that to govern a city the local governance imply an organisational capacity (governance, urban regimes) and an adaptative capacity wich means to consider the 'territorialized' nature of public problems.