Finding whether the right for local authorities to administer themselves freely is sufficiently protected leads to question the content of the principle and to analyze its level of implementation through the capacity of local authorities in Benin and France to act. In terms of the hegemony of the State over local authorities by means of the control of legality exercised by its representatives even if the administrative judge intervenes in fine in this process in France.

This thesis therefore strives not only to analyze the nature, the real legal value and the level of implementation of the concept in the relationships of local authorities with central power in Benin and in France, but to answer above all the question. Whether it constitutes a principal rule capable of imposing itself as such on the central power? Or is it a superior legislative rule because it is one with the constitutionality block? Or better, if it is a simple legislative rule, that is to say, an ordinary law  in Benin unlike France which raised it to the rank of constitutional rule and whose implementation work is organized by laws.