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Single-party dominance (SPD) is a phenomenon that has puzzled many scholars within the field of political science, as it does not fit into the standard dichotomy of democracy versus dictatorship. Kenneth Greene's Resource Theory seeks to explain prolonged electoral dominance in these systems by looking at resource asymmetries between the governing party and the opposition. Greene applies his theory to democratic and non-democratic SPD systems alike. In order to expand knowledge in the field of SPD research, this thesis has provided a critical analysis of Greene's theory using South Africa under the ANC within the timeframe of 1994 to February 2018 as an illustrative case. The thesis concluded that the Resource Theory could not be used for explaining ANC dominance, and indicated that resources have a limited power to explain SPD. As such, the aim of the thesis is to uncover theoretical weaknesses of the theory. Firstly, it is argued that the theory is weakened by the use of subjective and sometimes arbitrary concepts which hamper testability. The main theoretical flaw identified is Greene's assumptions of the nature of such systems, in which he sees the dominant party as one unit. I argue in this research that this assumption renders the theory unable to predict the consequences of factionalisation within the dominant party. Three main factors are identified to justify why resources have limited explanatory power. Firstly, factionalisation leads to intra-party competition for state resources, and these factions become dependent on a steady stream of resources to sustain themselves. This competition can become so fierce that the economy suffers. When resources become less available, these conflicts intensify. Consequently, the dominant party starts deteriorating from within and misconduct can no longer be concealed from the public. As the government becomes less responsive in terms of providing public goods in combination with increased public awareness, voter dissatisfaction also intensifies. This eventually leads citizens to abandon their allegiance to the party. The research study shows that resources are not independent from external and internal environments, indicating that asymmetric resource advantages alone cannot explain why these systems exist over longer periods of time.

It is widely accepted that the distribution of power between ethnic groups within a country plays a key role in major social, political, and economic outcomes. Researchers working on the topic have various measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and other closely related aspects such as ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and heterogeneity, available to them. These measures are, however, often used without sufficient critical reflection and their empirical differences are not entirely understood. The literature does not provide too much guidance either. In fact, efforts to comparatively evaluate data on how power is distributed between ethnic groups are in short supply. To address this gap in the literature, the study at hand provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of publicly available common cross-national country-level measures on ethnic dominance and exclusion. The findings of this study suggest that Varieties of Democracy's Exclusion by Social Group and Ethnic Power Relations' Ethnic Exclusion are more alike than the other measures under scrutiny, yet in general the empirical differences among common measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion are substantial. Scholars should thus reject an 'any measure will do' approach when choosing among competing measures.

After nearly a century of dominance of the international monetary system, has the US dollar finally met its match in the euro? When Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) came into existence in 1999, many observers predicted that the euro would soon join America's greenback at the peak of global finance. Achievements, however, have fallen short of aspirations. After an initial spurt of enthusiasm, international use of the euro now actually appears to be levelling off, even stalling, and so far seems confined largely to a limited range of market sectors and regions. The euro has successfully attained a place second only to the greenback, but it remains, and is likely to remain, a quite distant second without a determined effort by EMU authorities to promote their money's global role. The temptation will surely be great. In practical terms, it is difficult to imagine that EMU authorities will refrain entirely from trying to promote a greater role for the euro. But that, in turn, could be a recipe for discord with the US, which has never made any secret of its commitment to preserving the greenback's world-wide dominance. A struggle for monetary leadership could become a source of sustained tensions in US-European relations. Fortunately, however, there seems relatively little risk of a destabilising escalation into outright geopolitical conflict.

AbstractWe introduce a Bayesian approach for assessing Lorenz and stochastic dominance. For two income distributions, say X and Y, estimated via Markov chain Monte Carlo, we describe how to compute posterior probabilities for: (i) X dominates Y, (ii) Y dominates X and (iii) neither Y nor X dominates. The proposed approach is applied to Indonesian income distributions using mixtures of gamma densities that ensure flexible modelling. Probability curves depicting the probability of dominance at each population proportion are used to explain changes in dominance probabilities over restricted ranges relevant for poverty orderings. They also explain some seemingly contradictory outcomes from the p‐values of some sampling theory tests.

AbstractAfter nearly a century of dominance of the international monetary system, has the US dollar finally met its match in the euro? When Europe's economic and monetary union (EMU) came into existence in 1999, many observers predicted that the euro would soon join America's greenback at the peak of global finance. Achievements, however, have fallen short of aspiration. After an initial spurt of enthusiasm, international use of the euro actually appears now to be levelling off, even stalling, and so far seems confined largely to a limited range of market sectors and regions. The euro has successfully attained a place second only to the greenback – but it remains, and is likely to remain, a quite distant second without a determined effort by EMU authorities to promote their money's global role. The temptation will surely be great. In practical terms, it is difficult to imagine that EMU authorities will refrain entirely from trying to promote a greater role for the euro. But that, in turn, could turn out to be a recipe for discord with the United States, which has never made any secret of its commitment to preserving the greenback's worldwide dominance. A struggle for monetary leadership could become a source of sustained tensions in US–European relations. Fortunately, however, there seems relatively little risk of a destabilizing escalation into outright geopolitical conflict.

This updated 3rd edition is devoted to the analysis of various Stochastic Dominance (SD) decision rules. It discusses the pros and cons of each of the alternate SD rules, the application of these rules to various research areas like statistics, agriculture, medicine, measuring income inequality and the poverty level in various countries, and of course, to investment decision-making under uncertainty. The book features changes and additions to the chapters, and also includes two completely new chapters. One deals with asymptotic SD and the relation between FSD and the maximum geometric mean (MGM) rule (or the maximum growth portfolio). The other new chapter discusses bivariate SD rules where the individual's utility is determined not only by his own wealth, but also by his standing relative to his peer group.

The aim is to examine the discursive organization of "user-centred" team meetings in the Swedish rehabilitation sector. The "users" are aged between 4 and 30 and have been ascribed different kinds of impairments. The teams consist of one user and/or her/his relatives and different professionals. The analysis is primarily based on transcriptions of 18 audiotaped team meetings held by 10 different teams and focuses on two dimensions of dominance in interaction: the amount of talk and topic control. The findings point to professional dominance, but parents also have a great influence on the topic control. The degree of participation and the control of topics of the users who participate in the meetings vary, but most of the users become involved primarily by responding to the questions and suggestions of professionals and parents. In order to increase the users' control of the interactions the participants need to continuously discuss the organization of the conversations. The findings are related to complicating aspects of the conversations, including institutionalization, representation difficulties, varying communicative abilities, and expectations of expertise and adult liabilities.

Changes in occupational distributions in large & small metropolitan & nonmetropolitan areas during the 1980s are examined from two contrasting perspectives: (1) metropolitan dominance theory holds that major cities serve as the centers for decision making in the US, as evidenced by the influence of metropolitan areas over their surrounding rural hinterlands; & (2) deconcentration theory argues that advances in telecommunications & computer technology should allow workers to locate wherever they choose, resulting in a more balanced occupational structure between metropolitan & nonmetropolitan areas. Analysis of data from the 1980 & 1987 Current Population Surveys supports the hypothesis of continued or increasing metropolitan dominance; however, the data also suggest that lower-skilled, technical, & clerical jobs may be decentralizing away from metropolitan areas. It is concluded that advances in communication technologies might actually enhance the ability of businesses to make decisions far from the location of the operations they control. 4 Tables, 26 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article discusses dominance relationships in groups of male vervet monkeys and the potential relevance of selected findings from vervet studies to research on human political behavior. In considering the vervets, we first focus on the empirical data de scribing dominant and non-dominant animals, including both behavioral and bio chemical points of distinction, and then turn to the species-typical constraints associated with such dominance relationships. Methodological and theoretical points of departure for human studies are noted, and an illustrative study of humans is briefly summarized.

ABSTRACTThis paper applies stochastic dominance (SD) preference‐ordering criteria to job shop scheduling rules. A simulation model of a hypothetical dual‐constrained job shop is used to derive several measures of shop performance for a number of dispatching/due‐date scheduling policies. The results presented suggest that previous research conclusions concerning the relative performance of dispatching scheduling rules may need to be reconsidered if production schedulers are risk‐averse utility maximizers.

It is widely accepted that the distribution of power between ethnic groups within a country plays a key role in major social, political, and economic outcomes. Researchers working on the topic have various measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and other closely related aspects such as ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and heterogeneity, available to them. These measures are, however, often used without sufficient critical reflection and their empirical differences are not entirely understood. The literature does not provide too much guidance either. In fact, efforts to comparatively evaluate data on how power is distributed between ethnic groups are in short supply. To address this gap in the literature, the study at hand provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of publicly available common cross-national country-level measures on ethnic dominance and exclusion. The findings of this study suggest that Varieties of Democracy's Exclusion by Social Group and Ethnic Power Relations' Ethnic Exclusion are more alike than the other measures under scrutiny, yet in general the empirical differences among common measures of ethnic dominance and exclusion are substantial. Scholars should thus reject an 'any measure will do' approach when choosing among competing measures.

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the Stochastic Dominance (SD) approach to the evaluation of risky assets. Given a set of portfolios, the familiar EV procedure chooses a set of EV‐efficient portfolios while the SD procedures choose SD‐efficient sets that usually are quite similar to (but not identical with) the EV‐efficient set. The SD approach can be employed as a refinement of the EV model or as an alternative method of evaluating portfolios. The SD view has certain conceptual advantages in the screening of a set of portfolios, but the EV model has the important advantage of an optimizing algorithm that builds efficient portfolios. Also, the SD approach requires more data than the EV approach.

LateVictorianBritain was very important in the development ofBritish dominance in light consumer goods industries, such as fermented liquors and spirits; detergents and perfumery; bicycles and other carriages; paper, stationery, and bookbinding; and games of all kinds and sports goods. Firms developed technology‐based innovations and marketing‐based innovations, creating abnormal peaks of trademark registrations in certain industries. This article investigates those peaks and shows that factors usually pointed out as explainingBritish economic decline in heavy industries did not impact on the development of light consumer goods industries, and on the contrary encouraged their fast growth during this period. Trademark registrations are shown to provide new insights into the debate onBritish relative decline, when combined with other industry and firm‐level data.

AbstractAs the industrialization process in Western European countries took off in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they largely turned to Asia and Africa for raw materials and other resources, as well as for markets of their manufactures. Various entrepreneurial diasporas, including the Indians, Lebanese and Chinese, were at the forefront to exploit these burgeoning economic possibilities, particularly in gathering local mineral and agricultural commodities and marketing European goods in the Afro-Asian regions. The Chinese activities in Southeast Asia stood out: they not only presided over the commercial realm but also organized mining production and cash crop agriculture in ways largely autonomous of the colonial regimes and Western entrepreneurs. How can we explain the dominance of the Chinese migrants and sojourners in the Southeast Asian economy from the 1850s to the 1930s? This paper repudiates the existing literature, which largely credits their economic presence to conscious immigration policies of the colonial authorities, and instead highlights the effects of a confluence of developments in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1800), including the sidelining of South Asians, West Asians, and regional trading communities in favor of the Chinese. A particular focus is the roles played by symbolic capital and mechanisms of advanced credit and spiral marketing, and how these gave the Chinese a comparative advantage over other trading groups.