  We propose an extension of the Ewens measure on permutations by choosing the
cycle weights to be asymptotically proportional to the degree of the symmetric
group. This model is primarily motivated by a natural approximation to the
so-called spatial random permutations recently studied by V. Betz and D.
Ueltschi (hence the name "surrogate-spatial"), but it is of substantial
interest in its own right. We show that under the suitable (thermodynamic)
limit both measures have the similar critical behaviour of the cycle statistics
characterized by the emergence of infinitely long cycles. Moreover, using a
greater analytic tractability of the surrogate-spatial model, we obtain a
number of new results about the asymptotic distribution of the cycle lengths
(both small and large) in the full range of subcritical, critical and
supercritical domains. In particular, in the supercritical regime there is a
parametric "phase transition" from the Poisson-Dirichlet limiting distribution
of ordered cycles to the occurrence of a single giant cycle. Our techniques are
based on the asymptotic analysis of the corresponding generating functions
using Polya's Enumeration Theorem and complex variable methods.
