A brief case study of international fisheries and the law of the sea illustrates the international activity of the Pacific island states. This article focuses on prime ministers who reached office by succeeding another prime minister from the same party rather than by winning an election in their own right. Successors are found to be as numerous as those who won office through a general election. The odds are currently against successors. Successors who have the highest rate of success are those who waited between one and 12 months before calling an election.
Defeated successors are likely to quit as party leaders afterwards.
The findings are similar among jurisdictions, except for the Australian states, where successors have rarely been successful in recent decades.