CONSOCIATIONAL DEMOCRACY 223 largely revolving around nonideological squabbles..."The elites of the center parties that supported the Republic fulfilled to some ex- tent all of the logical prerequisites for consociational democracy except the most important one:they lacked the ability to forge effective and lasting solutions to pressing political problems.They indeed played a nonideological game,but,as Nathan Leites observes,with a "well- developed capacity for avoiding their responsibility."In other words, they were nonideological,but not constructively pragmatic.To turn a centrifugal into a consociational democracy,true statesmanship is required.Moreover,it is incorrect to assume that,because the elites were not divided by irreconcilable ideological differences,mass politics was not ideologically fragmented either. The second criticism of the cultural fragmentation thesis alleges,on the basis of independent evidence,that not only at the elite level but also at the mass level,ideology played a negligible role in France.Philip E.Converse and Georges Dupeux demonstrate that the French elec- torate was not highly politicized and felt little allegiance to the political parties."But the lack of stable partisan attachments does not neces- sarily indicate that the political culture was not fragmented.Duncan MacRae argues persuasively that political divisions did extend to the electorate as a whole in spite of the apparent "lack of involvement of the average voter."Even though political allegiances were diffuse,there were "relatively fixed and non-overlapping social groupings"to which "separate leaders and separate media of communication had access." The combination of fragmentation into subcultures and low politiciza- tion can in turn be explained by the negative French attitude toward authority.Stanley Hoffmann speaks of "potential insurrection against authority,"and Michel Crozier observes that this attitude makes it "impossible for an individual of the group to become its leader." se Nordlinger,"Democratic Stability and Instability:The French Case,"World Politics, xvIII (October 1965),143. 81 Leites,On the Game of Politics in France (Stanford 1959),2. s8 Nor does the reverse assumption hold true.Giovanni Sartori relates the instability of Italian democracy to "poor leadership,both in the sense that the political elites lack the ability for problem-solving and that they do not provide a generalized leadership." This weakness of leadership,he continues,"is easily explained by the fragmentation of the party system and its ideological rigidity."("European Political Parties:The Case of Polarized Pluralism,"in LaPalombara and Weiner,eds.,Political Parties and Political Development,163.)The example of the consociational democracies shows that this is not a sufficient explanation. 3 Converse and Dupeux,"Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,"Public Opinion Ouarterly,xxvI (Spring 1962),1-23. 40 MacRac,Parliament,Parties,and Society in France:1946-1958 (New York 1967), 333 41 Hoffmann and others,In Search of France (Cambridge 1963),8 (italics omitted); Crozier,The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago 1964),220