peer reviewed ; Political discourses help to define the legitimate and mobilizable conceptions to justify a certain exercise of power: it is at the level of their pragmatic translations within the devices of government that a certain "theory of action" is read that proposes and legitimizes the political problem to be solved and the modalities of public intervention (Rose & Miller, 1992). This article mobilizes a constructivist perspective that integrates the transformations of the state and its modes of action in Belgium, in the field of science policy: since 1988, universities have followed very different paths in the two communities, Flemish and French-speaking, to the extent that the Belgian territory today presents two political regimes of higher education and research. By analyzing at the level of individual actors some recent mechanisms for the management of university quality and the regulation of public funding of research, this comparative approach helps to bring to light the specific dynamics of normativity at the heart of the evaluation mechanisms that constitute forms of governmentality (Foucault, 1978) based on the commitment of the actors concerned. ; TASTI