The institutionalization of rural territorial development programs was accompanied by an intense academic effervescence on the subject. However, one of the most widespread criticisms of the literature produced is that it has a normative character, it lacks theoretical substance on social interaction and thus the territory seems to be reified by public policies. This essay has aimed to build an analytical framework for understanding the socio-political processes underlying the implementation of rural territorial development policies, organizing a conceptual instrument that would structure a relational approach to territorial development. It is considered that the approach adopted in this paper can provide empirical analyzes of different directions for those already expressed in previous works on the same object, reaching yet unexplored dimensions in the territorial development studies, such as the network of organizations, its historicity, its settings and the social and institutional factors that influence the activities of the actors in the territory, guiding its development trajectory. This theoretical and analytical construction leads to the assumption that “actors”, “networks” and “institutions” summarize the major components of the social dynamics of the territories and, therefore, defining elements of the trajectory of rural territorial development.