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Power of elected representative to govern
The power of elected representatives to govern, or what Merkel refers to as “effective power to govern” is the final partial regime. Effective power to govern is necessary to constructing an embedded democracy that is representative of “not only the procedural aspect but also the goals of democratic elections.” Within the different dimensions of embedded democracy as defined by Merkel, effective power to govern falls under the “dimension of effective agenda control.”

Effective power to govern may have at one point been considered a necessity for functioning democracies, but Merkel emphasizes that this is not the case for countries that have only recently democratized. In particular, nations that hold democratic elections but still host military forces with some degree of autonomous power cannot fully meet the requirements of effective power to govern, since unelected military officials may have undue sway over governmental operations. In these kinds of democracies, the underpinnings of political participation are compromised as the general populace is only allowed, at best, “low intensity citizenship” with most decisions left to extra-governmental, non-democratic forces. However, some arms of the government, such as a central bank or constitutional court, may be left autonomous or nearly autonomous and still meet the requirements of effective power to govern. This is only possible if these autonomous bodies are established with “constitutional consent,” fulfilling the social contract between the state and the people.

In keeping with Merkel’s assertion that “mutual embeddedness means that some partial regimes support the functioning of another partial regime,” effective power to govern is closely tied to the electoral regime. By ensuring that democratic elections are meaningful and democratically elected officials are afforded the representative powers expected by voters, maintenance of the effective power to govern provides "the necessary complementary support" to the electoral regime in "mak[ing] up liberal ‘embedded democracies.'"

Merkel’s notion of effective power to govern has been traced to Robert Dahl’s minimalist conception of democracy. Dahl’s definition of democracy requires that governmental “institutions...depend on elections and other expressions of the citizens’ preferences,” just as Merkel insists that the power to make policy must ultimately rest with democratically elected representatives of the people.

International integration
Integration into international organizations provides a source of external stability that democratic regimes cannot themselves produce individually. In particular, social, economic, and political organizations (as opposed to military ones) are necessary, since authoritarian regimes and defective democracies are able to function within the confines of even democratically-dominated military alliances. Merkel points to the European Union as the "most successful [organization] in the international embedding of democracies." International integration ultimately serves to protect the integrity of a democracy's internal partial regimes by subjecting them to external scrutiny. At the same time, better-established internal regimes also allow the state to be more effective in repelling threats from external actors. Therefore, international integration works in multiple ways to further embed and normalize democracy through the internal regimes.

Domain democracy
A domain democracy is a form of defective democracy in which actors who were not democratically elected as representatives of the people hold veto power in policy matters. Actors of this type "take certain political domains out of the hands of democratically elected representatives," hence the term domain democracy. Domain democracies are considered to be highly regional phenomena, with many defective democracies of this type seen in Latin America and Southeast Asia, but few in Central Asia or Eastern Europe. Paraguay, Thailand, and Colombia are commonly set forth as examples of domain democracies, specifically during their times of economic rule by guerrilla forces.