From fantasy to sci-fi, I think to have noticed an aversion towards writing democratic societies.
Even in sci-fi, I tend to see space feudalism much more than I see actually democratic states and when these states do exist, one rarely gets to see any of their inner workings ever, in my experience, and democratically elected officials are even more rarily important characters.
There are some possibilities for why I can think of maybe:
-To the average person, one big guy in charge at the top is much simpler and easier to write/understand than an actual democracy with systems for how different things work
-Though, I do think that, based on a lot of stuff I have seen, people seem to kind of think of monarchies/autocracies as the default potentially? If someone has to make up a faction that won't have too much relevance to the plot it will often be lead by a single, non-elected figure
-If you have a story that happens on a larger time-frame, with a leader figure being an important character, then democratic societies force you to consider why this character keeps getting re-elected even when they fuck up badly. In a narrative, having the bad guy simply be voted out of office would be potentially anti-climatic.
As this post is about actually democratic societies and not about autocracies with a democratic facade, this kind of thing would lead to potentially more depressing or gloomy narratives, because if the democratically elected big bad trully had the mandate of the people, that means that you can't have "The evil emperor/faction leader is defeated by our band of heroes and everything will be much better now" stories.
It means that the people of the faction agreed with them and it potentially means that the do-gooder protagonists may be forced to straight up wipe out a faction/its culture to some degree if they actually want to make the world a better place. It posits the possibilty that the average person, at least within that faction, may not be that "good" or "well-meaning".
Anyways, any thoughts from you on this? Am I just imagining this or is it an actual "trend" for the lack of a better word?