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First, in reality the whole thing is fluid and political science is more of an art than a science. There is a part of me that sees government from the lens of The Dictators Handbook which views governments without any regard to ideology but only on the number of people who control wealth (democratic governments have large groups of people while autocratic have smaller groups). From that perspective I'd imagine that AutDem, PatAut and NatPop are the same sort of oligarchy with an elite group of maybe a hundred people in government, industry, military, media and religion who make all of the decisions for the state.

However in my experience there is more motivating people than merely a desire for control of the budget. Though I could never get past the pornography in Game of Thrones but it had some great thought on the subject power is power and power lies where people believe it lies. The primary difference between the three authoritarian government has to do with the stories people tell to explain power. As best I can tell NatPop tells a story of a great people and the emphasis is on the blood of the people, they are the descendants of gods and are of a different sort then other people. AuthPat is a story about a great man, the world is filled with chaos but HE brings order and so we follow HIM. AuthDem is a story about a great nation, the government is better than other governments and its laws are better than other laws.

How I understand this is to say the OTL Churchill in the UK was an authoritarian democrat. The justification for his quasi-dictatorship was not that Churchill was just such a great man (though obviously that is implied in his telling of story) and certainly it was not that noble English blood is better than other blood (though that too he believed) but primarily it was that the United Kingdom was the greatest empire in the world because its laws were just and it made the world a better place. Churchill's narrative was that they would win because their whole system was just better than those of their enemies.

We can add Totalism to the same model since the number of people who controlled the budget was very similar to that of the others. Their story is that they have set the people free and any oppose them are seeking to enslave the people, therefore everyone should give up what they have for the cause of the world's freedom.

There's a a DK book titled "The Politics Book". It briefly goes over a vast array of political figures and their key "political idea", so to speak. Its not particularly detailed/comprehensive about the ideas it covers, but it does give a solid introduction to the key concepts of said ideas. For example, there are sections on Confucius, Karl Marx, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Sun Tzu, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, Gabrielle d'Annunzio, Friedrich Nietzsche, James Madison, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein, etc. It covers many different political thinkers over 2500 years of human history. Its a great place to start if you're interested in figuring out your political identity.

Wikipedia is also a great place to read, as well. There are thousands of pages on different political ideologies, figures, and parties.

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Edit: Its a little expensive, but worth the price of admission. https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained/dp/1465402144

Except Ossendowski admitted that the vast majority of his book was heavily exaggerated, if not outright bullshit (see: the parts where he claims every Buddhist knows about a secret underground kingdom running beneath all of Asia). If you want a scholarly and accurate book on Roman von Ungern-Sternberg's life, I highly recommend The Baron's Cloak by Willard Sunderland.

https://www.amazon.com/More-Hunger-William-Dudley-Pelley/dp/1426951116

Get yourself a real mans book

Is this book good? https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-White-Baron-Extraordinary-Nobleman/dp/0465022073

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Masterplan-Facts-Figures-Germany/dp/1907446966

https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Dog-Amazing-America-History/dp/1439109028

Its also a plot point in a kind of dated alternative history book.

https://www.amazon.com/Back-USSA-Eugene-Byrne/dp/0929480848/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=back+in+the+ussa&qid=1569328178&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.ca/King-Zog-Self-Made-Monarch-Albania/dp/0750944390

I have spent many hours reading about him and I have this coming in the mail

No step on snek and it’s already has a flag!

MacArthur has a pattern of disregarding Presidential orders to do whatever the hell he wants. He did it with the Bonus Army under Hoover, in the Philippines under FDR, and then tried it in Korea with Truman, but Truman finally set the man straight.

In short, He came home after being fired and whined like a god-damned child, completely fabricated the situation in the Korean war to his benefit, lied to the American people, and almost had the Congress agree with him that escalating the war in Korea to involving Communist China was the right decision. He used his reputation as a General since WW1 to try and challenge Truman's authority as the Commander-in-Chief of the US Military, disregarded Truman's authority as the "final word" of the US Military, and tried to get several Generals to walk out on Truman for refusing to escalate to the nuclear option, which likely would have triggered a serious crisis in the Defense Department if he succeeded.

He began contacting friends, congressmen, and media, using his former station as a lightning-rod for political office-seeking. Sen. Taft (R-Ohio) said Truman “must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of a series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office.” Make no mistake; MacArthur knew exactly what he was doing. He was a shrewd politician as much as he was a General, and he had been the bane of FDR and Hoover before Truman. He wanted to escalate the war in China, and he would do anything to do it, even if that meant torpedo'ing his CIC to run for President.

His actions were nothing short of an attempted coup-by-public-opinion.

The principal reason he failed in these endeavors can be found in the post-firing period. He returns to the United States, gives a "blistering" speech before a joint-session of congress (the only time a General was given this privilege in American history), and claimed that the USA could effectively own half of South-East Asia. Congress then called a emergency Senate Hearing with all of the prominent leaders in the Defense Department: Omar Bradley, George Marshall, Hoyt Vandenburg, Joe Collins, Curtis LeMay, and several other important leaders. In that briefing, they tore MacArthur to shreds;

>Joe Collins, the army chief of staff, explained how Communist restraint had prevented an utter American debacle. Referring to the moment MacArthur had initially sought permission to bomb into China, Collins said, “When the first recommendations came in to bomb across the frontier, our troops were separated in Korea. The Tenth Corps was operating from the base at Hungnam, and our other forces were operating from bases at Pusan and Inchon. As soon as the Chinese attack began we were very much concerned about the fact that we would have to get that Tenth Corps out; and had we permitted the bombing north of the Yalu, we were dreadfully afraid that that might be the thing that would release the Russian planes, and additionally, have them give additional assistance to the Chinese, and might well have subjected the Tenth Corps to bombardment and possibly submarine attack during the perilous evacuation from Hungnam. Troops evacuating from a port of that character, in commercial ships, are terribly subject to air and underwater attack; and in my judgment, it would be a much too risky procedure.”

After this kind of testimony, his support in Washington dried up, and with it his power. The Senate hearing is central to understanding what MacArthur did. Unfortunately, there are very few readily available sources for it online. You can read the Smithsonian's article on it, or read H.W Brand's "The General vs. the President", which has almost all of the testimony from Defense Department officials.