Relationships between public administrations and circus contractors were profoundly transformed following President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s launch of the first cultural policy in favor of circuses. By focusing on this new situation, this article shows the reciprocity of the links between the social identification process of a practice and public policy’s approaches to it. More precisely, the data allows us to identify three elements of the policy on circuses between 1978 and the middle of 1990s : its genesis, its redirection and the reasons put forward, and their effects on professional dynamics.