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Embedded democracy is a form of government in which democratic governance is secured by democratic partial regimes. The term "embedded democracy" was coined by political scientists Wolfgang Merkel, Hans-Jürgen Puhle, and Aurel Croissant, who identified "five interdependent partial regimes" necessary for an embedded democracy: electoral regime, political participation, civil rights, horizontal accountability, and the power of the elected representatives to govern. The five internal regimes are interdependent and work together to check the power of the government, while external regimes also help to secure and stabilize embedded democracies. Together, all the regimes ensure that an embedded democracy is guided by the three fundamental principles of freedom, equality, and control.

If a society lacks one of the partial regimes, it is classified as a defective democracy. Merkel named four notable types of defective democracy: exclusive democracy, illiberal democracy, delegative democracy, and tutelary democracy.

Embedded Democracy
The ideal embedded democracy is guided by the three fundamental democratic principles of freedom, equality, and control. Merkel uses Robert Dahl's definition of political equality, which includes equality "before the law and in the political process. While equality can infringe upon freedom, an embedded democracy should establish a balance between equality and freedom; to preserve the equality-freedom equilibrium, there must be checks on government power (horizontal and vertical accountability).

Political Participation
The internal regime of political participation is closely related to the electoral regime. According to Merkel, the leading scholar on consolidated democracy, participatory rights "make the public arena an independent political sphere of action, where organizational and communicative power is developed." Political participation is facilitated by freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to petition, and freedom of the press. In Merkel's vision of embedded democracy, citizens are able to form independent interest groups and organize parties to help them express their political preferences. Political participation is not limited to traditional institutionalized channels for expression; it can take place in arenas like the private media and civil society. Some scholars of democracy disagree with Merkel's assertion that frequent political participation is the ideal for a representative democracy. Joseph Schumpeter sees direct participation as limited to elections in a representative democracy; in the intervals between elections, citizens allow representatives to speak for them. Robert Dahl argues that only a small portion of the population will be active in political participation and warns that mass participation in a representative democracy could lead to dictatorship.

In weak or failed states, "low-intensity citizenship" is often commonplace. This means that many people are denied their full political rights or choose not to exercise them. Political participation in modern democracies is frequently weakened by public apathy and disinterest in government. As government bureaucracies have grown in size, people have generally participated in political processes less frequently, especially those in low socioeconomic groups. Some countries have more equitable voting patterns than others; for instance, Denmark has less income inequality than the United States as well as higher rates of political participation. However, political participation does not depend solely on income distribution: it is also influenced by individual motivation and group affiliation. In some cases, individuals whose economic status predisposes them to political apathy are more likely to participate if motivated by identification with a large group. In Fishkin's vision of deliberative democracy, interest groups or parties do not dominate a discussion. Deliberative polling may offer one means for political participation.

Alternative Models for Assessing Democracies
Defective democracy is an alternative to terms such as electoral democracy, illiberal democracy, or partial democracy, all of which describe governing systems that meet only some of the conditions required for a full democracy.

Embedded and defective democracies are primarily categorized based on their institutions rather than their purposes or outcomes. This is in keeping with the procedural approach to democratic scholarship followed by scholars such as Schmitter and Huntington.

An embedded democracy can be considered a type of consolidated democracy,meaning that the democratic regime in an embedded democracy is seen as legitimate and stable. Some scholars, like Merkel, take a maximalist approach to defining consolidated democracy by specifying the partial regimes of consolidation. Gunther considers three dimensions of consolidation--institutional, attitudinal, and behavioral--while Linz and Stepan highlight five arenas for consolidation: civil society, political society, rule of law, the state apparatus and economic society.

Other scholars have developed multidimensional models of democracy that are similar to Merkel's embedded democracy model. For instance, Dahl defines polyarchy based on seven distinct criteria: elected officials, free elections, inclusive suffrage, the right to run for office, freedom of expression, alternative information, and associational autonomy.

Some scholars critique Merkel's model for merely describing the institutional elements found in a liberal embedded democracy and then categorizing other "hybrid regimes" as diminished subtypes of democracy. Jayasuriya and Rodan point out that Merkel's model fails to account for how and why regimes form. Møller and Skanning praise Merkel's work for creating a cohesive system of democratic subtypes but argue that Merkel suffers from the "radial delusion," meaning that it lacks a hierarchical structure, which makes it difficult to conduct consistent empirical analyses of democratic regimes. According to Møller and Skanning, there are also inconsistencies between Merkel's original papers on embedded and defective democracy and later works by his colleagues Aurel Croissant and Hans-Jürgen Puhle.