The article analyzes the socio-economic, political, institutional and sociocultural factors that are the most significant, based on the results of in-depth interviews with experts from Moldova and Romania, the resultant of which was the actual registration of these territories as “territories of underdevelopment” and which will play a decisive role in the future preservation of either change of this status. The historical features of nation-building and identity politics in Romania and Moldova and their actual contexts, patterns of identity and self-realization of citizens, the nature of public delimitation, the state of the communicative field of society and power, interaction with supranational entities are examined. According to the authors, the key factors contributing to the preservation of the territories of underdevelopment are the ever-widening gap between society and the authorities against the backdrop of systemic corruption of the latter, the lack of a consistent policy of building and consolidating the civil nation and in general, building and co-operating with the society an original political national project, and also ineffective use of the internal development potential, coupled with the preservation of a complex of unresolved socio-economic problems.