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State reform at the territorial level (RÉATE – réforme de l’administration territoriale de l’État) undertaken in the framework of France’s RGPP ( Révision générale des politiques publiques – General Review of Public Policies) Program Review, is the most far-reaching reorganization since 1964, affecting both the distribution of work between different parts of decentralized government and the hierarchical relationships between central, regional, and department administrations. This paper considers, however, whether it constitutes a genuinely unprecedented reform or merely follows on from previous initiatives: it seeks to distinguish between processes of institutional replication and processes of change. Two arguments are developed: firstly, that the RGPP has provided an appropriate framework to revive and broaden the territorial administration reform already underway since 2002; secondly, that the conflictual process through which the reform has been introduced has entailed a compromise that cross-fertilizes the traditional organization of state administration at the territorial level in an original way.