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Key words: Institutionalism, Transaction Costs, APL (Local Productive Arrangement) footwear in Franca.

 If a productive concentration manages to keep their existence, it is interesting to notice what their specific attributes are, and the nature of their collective efficiency. From this perspective, this article aims to show the inter-institutional relations that take place within the Local Productive Arrangement (APL) of footwear from Franca. Specifically it is intended to show the key players involved in the transactions that happen in this APL and therefore see what the consequences of the actions of these actors to the economic performance of the APL.

From the methodological point of view, research, exploratory, which underlies the present article, was carried out in two phases: a survey of information on the websites of the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Development Bureau of São Paulo, Development Office in the city of Franca, and a semi-structured interview. The first one was based on the institutional actions that happened after the creation of the Permanent Working Group for the APL (APL GTP) in August of 2004 under the Ministry of Development, which highlighted the institutions participating in the reality of the clusters in Brazil from 2005 to the present day. In the case of Franca, this survey showed that about 40 institutions participate in the support of the actions that happen in this institutional environment. Based on these data, it was found that a local collective actor has featured prominently in the existing network: the Association of Footwear Industries of Franca. It was performed then, a semi-structured interview to determine the lines of action of this institutional actor, in order to put to test the argument of North (1994) that good institutions generate development.

For the Institutionalist perspective, the existence of any market is based on institutions that foster their creation and maintenance. Such institutions operate in a production environment made up of several actors who live under an economic, political and social reality which demands answers to follow the changes. North (1994) explains the nature of changes of the transaction costs (Coase, 1980). The core of the argument lies in the fact that when the existence of institutions favors low-cost transactions, they are gaining in importance, and may enable the existence of a productive environment that fosters economic development.

Measuring these costs is unpredictable and thus, there is a need to define variables to be considered. According to North (1994), one of them is the size of the market. Another variable is the meeting of their obligations. Ideological attitudes and perceptions also influence. Thus, this paper discusses the institutional environment of productive concentration of footwear industry from Franca, starting from these variables.

The perspective of networks, understood as a model of social organization in which there is an intertwining of institutional relations in pursuit of their goals, suggests that the social structure and coercion of the choices should be considered when trying to understand the relationships and behavior of actors in a particular environment (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Brito (2002) and Sacomano Neto (2003) suggested a structure that allows detecting a network with knots, positions, connections and flows that form an environment formed by various institutional actors. The interaction between them takes place in different ways from actor to actor, leading to the conclusion that some links are stronger than others, in the sense that they are more consistent, they happen more often. You can also recognize the existence of structural holes, when there are filters on the information between the actors, which causes lower crust, and low social capital. If there are stronger links between certain players and also holes in the network analyzed, it is suggested that there are key actors in the network responsible for the institutional isolation. It is argued in this paper that this is the case of Franca.