The Program for Sustainable Development of Rural Areas (PRONAT), entitled Territories of Citizenship, supported by the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), has a strategy focused on the "territorial approach", at whose core is the "cycle of social management". This presupposes an active, progressive and productive dialectic between identity, social participation and sustainable rural development through the creation of collegial deliberative arrangements. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this dialectic, based on the comparison of data from a national survey funded by the MDA/SDT/CNPq tender - Management of Rural Areas No. 05/2009. The methodology utilized combines two different approaches: a quantitative tabulation and statistical analysis of questionnaires applied in 37 territories through the Strategic Management System (SGE/SDT/MDA); a qualitative approach, through the analysis of 16 available reports of Monitoring and Information Teams; and 14 case studies, for a total sample of 20 Territories of Citizenship.