This thesis studies the relationships between local governments and economic interests and their contribution to the political construction of territories. These relationships are analysed through the study of a field of territorial public action, economic development, which is typically shared between different levels of government. The thesis considers the mechanisms supporting the crystallization and stabilization of systems of actors at different territorial levels (local, metropolitan and regional). It highlights the political and social construction of scales through a detailed analysis of power relations between political and economic actors infra and inter-scales of government. The thesis focuses on a time horizon that goes from the industrial crisis of the 1970s to the recent process of economic metropolisation. Empirical data comes from a comparative study of two non-capital regions in France and Italy, Lyon and Milan, both encountering a remarkable restructuring of their productive base in this time period. This work demonstrates that the political capacity of territories is influenced both by the capacity of action of local governments and the mobilisation of economic interests. As for the types of relationships between local governments and economic interests, stable variations between the two cases stand out from the analysis: in the French case public institutions have a more directive role in the government of local economic development policies, while it is rather the economic interests that influence public action in the Italian case. These differences have implications on the scales of government: in the French case the presence of a powerful government institution, namely the metropolitan government, contributed to stably lock in the systems of actors on this scale. By contrast, in Italy it is not possible to identify a dominant and stable scale along time due to the presence of powerful and multi positioned economic interests.

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