Asklemmy

It's a matter of circumstance. Authoritarianism is only useful in situations where time pressures make the slow, deliberate decisions of democracy unworkable. Combat is a good example of this. When the shells are raining down around you, there isn't really time to hold a vote on how to proceed. So, in such situations there is usually a chain of command which is given authoritarian control. Other emergent situations will also often require similar levels of top-down control. The person in charge may not make the best or fairest decisions in the heat of the moment. But, inaction will almost certainly be a worse choice.

The other side of this is, when the situation isn't emergent, a democratic (well, really semi-democratic, but I'm going to use "democratic") system is likely the best choice. And those democratic systems would be wise to prepare for the emergent situations by identifying and designating the people who will be handed dictatorial control when the fecal matter hits the air circulator. And the system for identifying when the emergency has ended, how dictatorial power is unwound and how the performance of the person handed that power is to be judged.

The reason I hedged with "semi-democratic" is that a truly democratic system can have issues too. The classic "tyranny of the majority" problem. As any majority could override the rights of a minority in a truly horrible fashion. The solution being things like constitutional democracies, where the power of the majority is limited in specific ways (e.g. unrevokable rights).