Meh… it seems to me like authoritarian regimes are basically designed to promote yes-men and nepotism. The whole premise for an authoritarian regime is that your power is secured by being the strongest guy with a the strongest, most loyal friends. By design, an authoritarian leader can never inherently trust their subordinates, because they don’t have any wide-reaching popular mandate to rule. That, combined with the fact that being the top dog is lucrative as fuck, means that only people the leader trusts are ever getting promoted to key positions.

You could also flip it: If an authoritarian leader constantly promotes people that oppose them to key positions, it’s a matter of time before one of those people gains enough support to initiate a power struggle. If they lose, they’re replaced, and if they win, you have a coup - rinse and repeat.

Basically, a functioning autocracy is incapable of having genuine opposition. It’s more or less a part of the feature-set.