Nah . The key difference between the monarchies of old and right win authoritarian nationalism is in the nationalist part . Up until the 18 th and 19 th centuries popular nationalism wasn ' t really a thing . France was a geographic location , not a set of ideals , beliefs , laws , or shared culture to which individuals owed patriotism or fealty . That and the fact that many monarchies weren ' t governed the same as an authoritarian dictatorship . There were contractural agreements of fealty , parliaments in many countries though usually aristocratic controlled purse strings , and they usually had many different types of economies existing under them , from communes to mercantile systems . To confuse authoritarianism and nationalism with the monarchies of old is conflating them a bit too much . Not that they were anything close to liberal democracies , but they still weren ' t the same thing .