Was considering this very question the other day and I think I'd probably prefer to be persecuted by a monarch than by a majority of voters anyway.
Discussion
over the course of history tyrants figured out that if they switch from kings to elected officials they can keep their power and shift the blame to someone else
the book 48 Laws of Power talks about how being the one that makes the calls rather than the one who takes the falls protects your privilege, and so long as people look at the one who makes all the declarations and signs all the signatures and not who tells him what to do their power continues
we are at the endgame of this play though, the concept has been dubbed "deep state" and what people are going to figure out is that you can't have state without deep state behind it and so there will eventually be an understanding that you can't have a state