Reddit reviews The Call from Algeria : Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam

Warning! Political opinions follow! Also, this is kinda my area of study, so I apologize if I ramble a bit.

Of course military dictatorships can have high approval ratings. Consider Nasserist Egypt, for example. However, that doesn't by itself make these forms of government legitimate or moral, because the decision you're describing is simply impossible. Fundamentally, dictatorships are bad for the public at large.

There's a good book on military coups d'etat (the usual origin story for military dictatorships) that you should read: Edward Luttwak's Coup D'Etat: A Practical Handbook. In addition to being incredibly fun to read (reading about undemocratic social change is a guilty pleasure of mine), he discusses the conditions that lead to a coup. To boil it down to stuff that's relevant to your question, you'd need:

• A lack of established democratic traditions
  
  
• A "mechanical" state structure which answers to orders from above, but doesn't think too hard about them
  
  
• An idea of political legitimacy that rests on force and charisma more than anything else
  
  
• A situation where the Army is the only institution organized enough to take power
  
  Under conditions like that, you're not going to get governments which are fundamentally interested in everyone's well-being and safety. You're going to get despots, just like on Earth. Another thing worth noting from Luttwak is that in the real world, the vast majority of countries with conditions conducive for coups d'etat are poor ex-colonies, which doesn't lend itself to good outcomes either.
  
  Here I move beyond Luttwak and more into Robert Malley's The Call From Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Call To Islam. Malley's account of exactly these sorts of regimes (good examples are Nasserist Egypt and Ghana under Nkrumah) emphasizes the fact that they were almost always more interested in ideological outcomes above all else. They came to power because they believed they could do what they thought was right to fix the problems of these ex-colonies. All of them considered democracy to be somewhere between a farce and an invitation for foreign invasion. These are not people that consider the individual's well-being very highly.
  
  Perhaps we can work with this, though. Are you looking for softer authoritarianism, or legitimately enlightened despotism? The first is something you can find historical examples of, but the second, well, you're on your own.