Singapore is certainly an interesting case: It is a parliamentary democracy, but given the dominance of the ruling party, it is also considered "soft-authoritarian".

That is a fairly generous way to put it. I've been there and know people who live there...more often you might hear something like "benevolent dictatorship", but only very much in private. It's not a good place to be an opposition member, and having posted this, I'm unlikely ever to be welcome there again.

The folks in charge have had essentially unlimited power, but have used that power to govern very skilfully. Given the unlimited power, this is more because they simply felt like it, not because there was any institutional or structural reason whatsoever pushing them towards that or limiting them to sane actions.

Similarly, absolute monarchy definitely works better than anything else...if the monarch in question happens to be skilled and benevolent. Constitutional limitations to power arose in a lot of places because that isn't always the case. You're better off with a solid 8 than a random number from 0 to 10. Just because the roll comes up 9 or 10 once in a while does not suggest in any way that the "dice" method of government is the one to go with.

Jim