The current once-in-a-century multi-vote (and still counting as of this writing) election of a new Speaker of the House is a case study in a time-honored method of a small minority dictating the outcome of collective effort. If the margin of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was larger, twenty-odd Congresspeople would not be able to wield such power.
Going back to the time of Machiavelli, and no doubt earlier than that, minority control has been often used to advance the interests of a few people, or even one, at the expense of an otherwise unified majority.
