214 WORLD POLITICS of their very limited formal powers,often have decisive influence.These councils and committees may be permanent organs,such as the power- ful Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands-a perfect exam- ple of a cartel of economic elites-or ad hoc bodies,such as the cartels of top party leaders that negotiated the "school pacts"in Holland in 1917 and in Belgium in 1958. The desire to avoid political competition may be so strong that the cartel of elites may decide to extend the consociational principle to the electoral level in order to prevent the passions aroused by elections from upsetting the carefully constructed,and possibly fragile,system of cooperation.This may apply to a single election or to a number of successive elections.The paridad and alternacion principles in Colom- bia entail a controlled democracy for a period of sixteen years,during which the efficacy of the right to vote is severely restricted.Another example is the Dutch parliamentary election of Ior7,in which all of the parties agreed not to contest the seats held by incumbents in order to safeguard the passage of a set of crucial constitutional amendments; these amendments,negotiated by cartels of top party leaders,contained the terms of the settlement of the sensitive issues of universal suffrage and state aid to church schools.A parallel agreement on the suffrage was adopted in Belgium in Io without holding the constitutionally prescribed election at all. Consociational democracy violates the principle of majority rule,but it does not deviate very much from normative democratic theory. Most democratic constitutions prescribe majority rule for the normal transaction of business when the stakes are not too high,but extraordi- nary majorities or several successive majorities for the most important decisions,such as changes in the constitution.In fragmented systems, many other decisions in addition to constituent ones are perceived as involving high stakes,and therefore require more than simple major- ity rule.Similarly,majority rule does not suffice in times of grave crisis in even the most homogeneous and consensual of democracies.Great Britain and Sweden,both highly homogeneous countries,resorted to grand coalition cabinets during the Second World War.Julius Nyerere draws the correct lesson from the experience of the Western democ- racies,in which,he observes,"it is an accepted practice in times of emergency for opposition parties to sink their differences and join to- gether in forming a national government."3 And just as the forma- 20 Nyerere,"One-Party Rule,"in Paul E.Sigmund,Jr.,ed.,The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (New York 1963),199