Indice de Souveraineté Budgétaire (ISB) : Proposition d’un indicateur de mesure de l’autonomie financière des collectivités territoriales[Budget Sovereignty Index (BSI): A Proposal for Measuring the Financial Autonomy of Local Governments]

This working paper proposes the Budget Sovereignty Index (BSI), an indicator designed to complement existing approaches to assessing the financial autonomy of local governments. The BSI is defined, in its basic form, as Gross Savings divided by Own Operating Revenues, multiplied by 100. The purpose is not to replace conventional indicators of financial performance or public financial management frameworks, but rather to introduce an analytical perspective focused on the share of locally generated resources that remains available as savings. The paper presents the conceptual rationale of the indicator, its interpretation conditions, limitations, and an empirical validation agenda. It reviews the literature on municipal finance, fiscal federalism, tax capacity, and public financial management, positioning the BSI as a complementary analytical tool rather than a substitute for existing frameworks such as PEFA. At this stage, the thresholds proposed within the Triple A Doctrine should be considered exploratory benchmarks rather than universally validated standards. The paper concludes with testable hypotheses and directions for future empirical research using panel data on local governments.