I agree that if you just had one leader with absolute power then it probably won’t work, and that kind of government probably isn’t included in the author’s “many forms of government will work quite well”. I think what he probably has in mind are governments that look authoritarian from the outside but still has some kind of internal politics/checks-and-balances that can keep the top leader(s) from going off the rails. I wish I had a good gears-level model of how that kind of government/politics works though. I do suspect that “work quite well” might be fragile/temporary and dependent on the top leaders not trying very hard to take absolute power for themselves, but I’m very uncertain about this due to lack of knowledge and expertise.
I agree that if you just had one leader with absolute power then it probably won’t work, and that kind of government probably isn’t included in the author’s “many forms of government will work quite well”. I think what he probably has in mind are governments that look authoritarian from the outside but still has some kind of internal politics/checks-and-balances that can keep the top leader(s) from going off the rails. I wish I had a good gears-level model of how that kind of government/politics works though. I do suspect that “work quite well” might be fragile/temporary and dependent on the top leaders not trying very hard to take absolute power for themselves, but I’m very uncertain about this due to lack of knowledge and expertise.