During the three decades of independence, in the Republic of Moldova has been undertaken several actions regarding the territorial reorganization of the local power and administrative mechanisms at subnational level. But these were insufficient, and in some cases badly achieved, being ostentatiously rejected by the political actors and officials from the state and local public authorities. In general, the reforms and restructuring of the public administration at the local level and, implicitly, of the territorial organization of the local public power, have been achieved according to the political tactics and changes, but not on the basis of coherent strategies and with clearly defined goals. Chronologically, the process of reforming the territorial organization of the local power has covered three distinct stages: First stage: perpetuation of the soviet-type centralized territorial administrative delimitation, which covers the period from the declaration of Independence till the end of the 1998. Second stage: trying to build the territorial system of exercising the local public power in the spirit of the decentralization and local autonomy principles, which lasted from the end of the 1998 till 2003. Third stage: returning to the centralized territorial organization of the local public power, which started in 2003 and lasts until now. There was a return at the soviet system of local public power organization; the number of local collectivities of the first level was increased by 30% compared to the previous period. In this article has been analyzed these three distinct stages of the reforming process of the local power territorial organization in the Republic of Moldova.