The complexification and diversification of public policies have led to start to analyze them as social constructions and complex conjunctions of institutional agreements. Those agreements exist among economic and social agents who hold divergent interests. The notion of public action has been mobilized to take into account the renovation of the management processes of policy making: the fragmentation of power spaces, the actors' interdependence and the presence of confrontation and conflict in the public action arena, the last being more and more canalized into negotiation spaces created to host negotiation mechanisms. The paper analyses one aspect of the interaction between social movements and territorialized public policies through the different configurations among social actors in the negotiation arena of Brazilian federal Programme for Sustainable Development of Rural Territories (PSDRT). The main question is how do civil society actors appropriate, adapt and tailor public policy instruments in the negotiation arena in order to use them to their own contexts? Our hypothesis is that it is possible to enrich the production of knowledge on those mechanisms revealing dialogue, power interplay, status asymmetries among heterogeneous actors through the analysis of the actors' social configurations (individual and institutional) implied in those negotiation processes. The paper examines two cases in the territory of Aguas Emendadas (DF region in the Cerrados area), the territory of Portal da Amazônia (State of Mato Grosso). First results have shown an institutionalisation process of territorial development framework with the emergence and empowerment of new rural leaders, but a precarious quality of the local projects elaborated and negotiated in these arenas, as well as a small territorial impact.