It is worth noting that the distortions caused by monarchical social arrangements are contingent on the state of culture itself.
It is easy to imagine that 1,000 years ago there were stable monarchical societies which functioned the way they did because of existing metaphysical frameworks that a vast majority of the populace believed in.
Today it is a less effective mode of governing, or even arranging social organizations, because of what a vast majority of the populace believes: that each person is equal before the law in the eyes of their peers, and that each has the implicit opportunity to rise as high in the hierarchy as possible. The instability in this case arises from contradictions between particular arrangements and a system-wide integrity which is held in place by mutual beliefs.
Of course, it can get much more complicated. This universal belief is slowly being whittled away as the highways of personal advancement die out, and the shape of the overall structure hardens, so that large swathes of the population will become desperate for a charismatic leader who promises some sort of actionable direction, other than stagnation and slow disintegration.
But at the same time this impulse is very dangerous. The resent that ambitious individuals feel upon being denied their ascent will not simply go away. Many Americans are horrified of any attempt at domination by their peers: the rugged individualist sensibility remains, so that the further the ambitious are denied power, the greater they crave it, setting the stage for an unstable and explosive arms race.
So the advice of Buddhists and Daoists in this case becomes much more clear: become as water, for rigid things under pressure break, which releases energy proportionate to the sum of force required to break them. When you have many rigid things that are breaking at once, well, you have yourself some amplification.
