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Efforts to reconeeptualize elite strueture and functioning in stable democracies, together with data from surveys of elite interaction networks in three demoeratie soeieties, suggest that the eonventional power elite, ruling class and pluralist perspeetives are only partly accurate and that fusing them in a more realistie model makes mueh sense. Using data from comparable surveys of national elites in the US, Australia and West Germany, we argue that the configurations of elite circles in these secieties reveal tight integration, as in the power elite and ruling dass models, together with representation of numerous, diverse groups, as in the pluralist model. We find comprehensive integration in eaeh of the three national elites, with a tunnel-like strueture of communieation networks that is inclusive of all sectors and heterogeneous in the soeial origins, attitudes and partyaffiliations of the several hundred most centrally loeated persons. We eontend that an informal interaction structure providing all major elite groups aeeess to decisionmaking is a precondition of any stable democracy.