Abstract
By isolating key variables and limiting their value, limiting case models portray processes that are empirically rare or nonexistent. Such models, however, have often been extremely useful in the analysis of events in the real world. The perfect competition model, borrowed from economics, has been useful in analysis of social behavior, but many social phenomena appear rather far removedfrom the limited assumptions of this model. This paper proposes two additional limiting case models-perfect benevolence and perfect malevolence-as alternative ideal descriptions. Insights from the three ideal models are then used to develop a more general model with less restrictive assumptions based on four variables: degree of monopoly, degree of explicitness, identification, and terms of exchange. Several empirical applications are discussed.
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