Each concept is read twice: whether the approach carries it, and whether the approach's own sources claim it. A concept that is absent and was never claimed is a gap in the field rather than a failure of the work, and is marked out of scope.
Segmental autonomy
PartialClaimed · partialDefinition · Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (1977)
In a deeply divided society, each group governs its own internal affairs — its schools, its family law — within its own sphere, instead of everyone living under one uniform rule.
Analysis
Each delegating principal sets the permissions and scope of its own agent, and each digital service provider decides the terms on which it admits agents at all, so there really are many spheres with their own rules and no merging step. But the sphere is an account or a website, held by one individual or one firm, rather than a group governing its internal affairs. Lijphart's segments have an internal life and a claim to self-rule; here the unit of autonomy is whoever happens to own the credential or the server.
Choice-of-law rule
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Friedrich Carl von Savigny, System of the Modern Roman Law (1849)
When several bodies of rules could govern the same case, an explicit rule decides which one actually does — and states the reason. Without such a rule, "different rules for different groups" has no answer for the cases in between.
Analysis
A credential states what one principal has authorized its own agent to do. It never says which of several bodies of rules governs a case, because no plurality of rule sets is in view: the subject throughout is the scope of a single grant and the chain of accountability behind it. When a service provider's conditions and a delegating user's grant point different ways, what the framework offers is refusal at the gate rather than allocation, and the audit trail records the configuration applied, not a reason why one order reached the case rather than another.
Mutual veto and proportionality
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (1977)
Decisions that affect all groups require every group's consent, and representation is proportional to each group's size — so no segment can simply be outvoted on what matters most to it.
Analysis
No group consents to anything here and nothing is proportional to anything. A service provider can refuse an agent and a user can narrow a grant, but both are unilateral refusals inside one's own sphere rather than a consent requirement over decisions affecting all. Those most exposed to agent activity, the people an agent contacts or transacts with, appear in these papers as parties to be protected, never as parties whose agreement is needed.