25 years after democracy was restored in Chile, institutional rules of regional state universities still keep their content markedly authoritarian, allegedly neutral in its institutional definition and intervened by the Central Government in the appointment of the members of his superiors collegiate authorities. In this context, the transition towards democratization of these institutions and their legitimacy as instruments of regional development, necessarily involves repealing these regulatory rules and their replacement by others, ensuring their democratic performance; oriented goals and values built through deliberative and participatory processes. Also, the entire university community is called to a transformation process under rational values of the university institutional system, involving goals of rational actions. The purpose of this paper is then to describe procedures and mechanisms that would let major institutions to be legitimized development tools, endowed with decisionmaking systems that could guarantee democratic, transparent processes and an effective relationship with the environment.