Presuming authoritarianism to be this one thing was the starting point, a worldview shaped by neo-colonial "democracy or else" is my theory as to why the alternatives in types of government as seen from a western view point are either authoritarian, communist or democratic (even putin and dprk are democratic lol). In reality, putin's russia, dprk, china, vietnam, etc... are all different from each other. You can't be succesful like china by being communist alone for example or end up poor like nk simply because one family of dictators ruled over a few generations (the british monarchy of dictators ruled for over a millenium and had the largest empire ever).

British/english monarchy still has a few decades until its millennium (2066 and all that) but yes, "democracy or else" is remarkably reductive (I doubt the 2k+ representatives to this year's 二十大 went there if they weren't going to be voting on party business and positions, and on the other hand there are "good monarchies" just as in 1970 there were still "good fascists", so the categories might be worse than reductive; they could easily be mistaken).

I would rather blame ignorance than malice: western viewpoints are oversimplified because by and large we westerners do not care to learn about the important distinctions to be made. However, I suspect that will slowly change over the course of this century. (In 1985, it only took the G5 to have enough corner to manipulate the exchange rate of the USD. Today it would probably take almost the entire G20 to do so.) Pushing my thumbs that it will change for the better.

> ... do not care to learn ...

Slogan: wars are God's way of teaching geography to Americans.