tolerance and limited constitutional government... the norm in Poland in times when the rest of Europe was being devastated by religious hatred and despotism." It was seen as one of the key principles of the Commonwealth political system and culture, the Golden Liberty. At the same time, historians hold that the principle of liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system and Commonwealth's eventual downfall. Deputies bribed by magnates or foreign powers, or simply content to believe they were living in some kind of "Golden Age", for over a century paralysed the Commonwealth's government, stemming any attempts at reform. Piotr Stefan Wandycz wrote that the "liberum veto had become the sinister symbol of old Polish anarchy." Wagner echoed him thus: "Certainly, there was no other institution of old Poland which has been more sharply criticized in more recent times than this one.". Modern parallels and popular culture References in popular culture A 2004 Polish collectible card game, Veto, set in the background of a royal election during an election sejm, is named after this procedure. Modern parallels Until the early 1990s, IBM had a decision-making process called "non-concur" in which any department head could veto a company-wide strategy if it did not fit in with their own department's outlook, the disagreements being then sent to the superiors in the hierarchy, often taking several months. That effectively turned IBM into several independent fiefdoms. "Non-concur" was eliminated by CEO Louis Gerstner, who was brought in to revive the declining company. Dispositions of the European Union law requiring unanimity between states have been compared to the liberum veto by some commenters. Wallonia vetoing Belgium's signature of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada brought comparisons to this rule. See also Consensus decision-making Filibuster Minoritarianism Notes References Further reading Davies, Norman. God's Playground: The origins to 1795 (2005). Grzegorz Ekiert, "Veto, Liberum", in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed. ‘'The Encyclopedia of Democracy'’ (1998) 4:1340-41 Heinberg, John Gilbert. "History of the majority principle." The American Political Science Review (1926) 20#1 pp: 52–68. in JSTOR Lukowski, Jerzy. "Political Ideas among the Polish Nobility in the Eighteenth Century (to 1788)." The Slavonic and East European Review (2004): 1–26. in JSTOR Roháč, Dalibor. "The unanimity rule and religious fractionalisation in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic." Constitutional Political Economy (2008) 19#2 pp: 111–128. Roháč, Dalibor. "'It Is by Unrule That Poland Stands': Institutions and