In France, cultural policy begins to take on a different meaning from the Popular Front government in the 1930s. This leftist government emphasizes the politics of the vulgarization of culture, a culture reserved for the bourgeoisie or to the nobility. In 1959, the Ministry of Culture was created and André Marlaux, Minister of Culture, rushed to embody his ideas on culture, the 'democratization of culture' whose goal is to make everyone love culture. This policy, soon criticized for its spirit of elitism emphasizing the art and culture of the "fine arts", is replaced (or supplemented) by the "cultural democracy" in the 1980s. This policy of cultural democracy supports the idea of citizen participation in the cultural field either as spectators, as an artist, or even as an organizer. But following the decentralization of the 1980s, the deregulation and the globalization that happened in the 1990s, the state gradually lost control over the cultural field. The process of “désétatisation” of the culture took place and it is then the cities, armed with a powerful theory, creative city, which start to structure the cultural governance. The paradigm of French cultural policy is beginning to change. This article aims to examine the evolution of French cultural policy and analyze important elements causing this change, from the 'democratization of culture' to 'cultural democracy', then to the metropolitan cultural policy.