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The distribution of influence in organizational decisions is analysed in relation to institutional frameworks and characteristics inherent to decision topics. Distribution of influence is defined as the concentration of participants in decision process and their specific capability to influence decision outcomes. This definition encompasses two dimensions which are: participation in the decision processes and effective influence upon the decision outcomes. Institutional frameworks are distinguished according to the loci of their genesis and existence, that are: the focal organization the task-environment and the larger social context. Six characteristics inherent to decision topics are identified as related to variables defined as properties of decision. The analysis is carried out at two distinct stages. At the first stage, it examines the relationships of the institutional frameworks - existing at the organization and the task environment level - and of the properties of decisions with the distribution of influence in decision processes. At the second stage, the patterns of influence that emerged out of the first stage of analysis are analysed in terms of cultural traits prevailing in Brazilian society. The results point to variation in the distribution of influence in decision processes associated with factors of the taskenvironment, of the context of the organizations and characteristics inherent to decision topics. But they do not provide a wholly satisfactory explanation of such variation. A more general pattern of influence in management decisionmahing, characterized by low level of participation and high centre of influence in decision processes, appears as the dominant profile of the distribution of influence in Brazilian organizations. Interpreted in the light of the Brazilian social context, this pattern of influence in management decision making shows pervasive cultural traits, identified in the macro social system. Comparing the patterns of influence in management decisionmaking in Brazil and Britain, similarities and differences come to light. The comparative analysis corroborates the argument that patterns of influence in management decision making are bound to contingent as much as to institutional factors. / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico CNPq - and from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - UFMG

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No / The federal government under Cardoso was not ideologically committed to the adoption of specific "neoliberal" policies in the field of crime control and criminal justice through the reform of the courts, the police, and the prison system. Its failure to curtail institutionally driven human rights violations resulted from a more diffuse "environmental" effect of neoliberalism whereby fiscal management concerns monopolized the government's economic and political capital and from structural constraints on domestic political and governance configurations such as federalism and the character of the Ministry of Justice. Penal policy in Brazil, as elsewhere, was incoherent and volatile because of the confluence of two distinct political ideologies, economic neoliberalism and social neoconservatism, with the federal government pursuing strategies of delegation and denial. Policy transfer and norm convergence were affected positively by the international human rights regime and its domestic allies and negatively by local moral conservatives and producer groups acting as policy blockers rather than entrepreneurs.

Yes / This chapter examines an innovative experience in prison management pioneered in the 1990s in São Paulo state, Brazil, whereby small, decentralised prison units were co-managed by community-based NGOs and the state prison authorities. These Resocialisation Centres (Centros de Ressocialização - CRs) were human rights compliant, run at half the cost of mainstream prisons, and emphasised rebuilding humane relationships between prisoners, and prisoners and their families. The CRs were inspired by Catholic volunteers completely taking over local jails, which came to be known as APACs. The chapter contrasts the APAC and CR ethos and practice. The former insisted on Christian faith, voluntarism and a sceptical view of the state as a penal actor. The latter preferred a secular approach, semi-professionalised NGOs, and formal partnerships that see the state as potentially capable of meeting its human rights and democratic legal commitments to those it incarcerates. The CR model of co-production of offender rehabilitation and desistance thus enables the local community to assist the state’s ‘moral performance’ within its penal institutions. The CR experiment is analysed in relation to competing models of prison governance (including forms of semi-privatization), and competition between criminal justice, civil society and religious actors for ‘ownership’ of the offender.