Clients. None of these are remotely models for other countries to follow, alternative paradigms of government like Imperial Germany or Japan, or the totalitarian regimes that are now dust except for North Korea. The closest thing to an alternate respectable paradigm of government now is managed democracy, like in Singapore or Russia, which appears to be unstable, one more variety of anocracy.

The key is legitimate. Are there any dictatorships that don't even make a nod towards the idea of popular sovereignty? Any states where someone could say "L'etat, cest moi."?

As far as Panama goes, the US's Warsaw Pact.