In the present Master’s Thesis, we examine the causes and consequences of the Swiss debt brake, a mechanism designed to balance the Confederation's income and expenditure over a business cycle. The paper inserts the constitutional object into Swiss economic history, to understand how the country's economic, social, and political characteristics explain the birth of the brake. We use the neo-realist approach to institutional change to study the causes of the balanced budget rule. It highlights the influence of various economic, academic, and political actors during the 1990s to stimulate economic competitiveness by liberalizing the economy and restricting the power of the state. Certain political players with close ties to the industrial and financial world proposed motions to reform Swiss fiscal policy, to reduce public indebtedness, by constraining the state's share in the economy. To study the consequences of the debt brake on the Swiss economy, we use an approach based on fiscal space and functional finance. While Switzerland benefits from a large fiscal space, it does not use it to achieve full resource utilization but rather uses the generated fiscal surpluses to reduce public indebtedness. Based on sectoral accounts, this surplus has the effect of withdrawing savings from other sectors, particularly Non-Financial Corporations (NFC). If Switzerland's fiscal position is sustainable, it is largely thanks to the current account balance, which accounts for a significant proportion of national income.