Bonus points for the following.
A.) They regularly monitored and executed political opposition.
B.) their policies legitimately improved the well being of their people.
C.) People outside of their dominion saw the people inside as disillusioned about said autocrats competency.
Check out this one AMAZING trick that made the Greeks LOVE their tyrants!
Think of Ancient Greece. Are you thinking of temples and statues, of heroes and philosophers? Are you thinking of democracy?
Of course you are. The Greeks were the first people to introduce democratic government. But they didn't stop there! They also launched another word, which they took from their neighbours: tyranny.
But surely, you ask, the freedom-loving pro-democratic Greeks would have hated tyrants? Would have risen up and thrown them out? Would have fed them to the dogs?
Sure they did. Eventually. When they had learned to stop worrying and love democracy. But that took a while. It had to be invented first, and then perfected, and until that time, what was a Greek city-state to do? There was no fixed idea of what a government should look like. Most places had a couple factions of rich men fighting each other for supremacy. All those laws the Greeks wrote? They were all about trying to channel that violence, trying to give everyone a big enough slice of the cake that they would stop fighting to get more.
Needless to say, this usually didn't work! The result is that these states were always unstable. They were often in open civil war. Nobody wants civil war, especially when your state is only a couple thousand people. They were desperate for the elite to stop fighting.
On the other hand, these rich factions often gave nice things to their community to get their support. You know those temples we mentioned, those statues? Most of those were paid for by these same elite men, who tried to get people to think of them as benefactors. You build a statue, people remember you. You fund a festival, people will cheer you on. You build a temple, people will think you love the gods.
That's not the trick, though!
Here's the thing. All these factions vying for power - every now and then, one of them won. They beat their rivals in the game for influence, and then got rid of the main contenders. Exile or execution was common. And then there was only one man left. They took on the name of "tyrant" - a word borrowed from Lydian - to express their supreme power. They were large and in charge.
And here it is!
When you've violently disposed of all your rivals, there's no civil war anymore!
States that fell under long-lasting tyrannies tended to prosper simply because they were at peace with themselves. The best tyrants co-opted their remaining rivals by giving them some semblance of power, so that everyone would have a stake in keeping them in the saddle. And then it was just a matter of doing that great public beneficence. With more resources at their disposal than ever, great tyrants like the Kypselids in Corinth or the Peisistratids in Athens built great public works: temples, market squares, public fountains, etc. The great slipway over the Isthmus of Corinth was the work of its tyrant, as was the aquaduct on Samos, an artificial waterway cut through 500m of rock. Once in power, the tyrants made it rain, and the people loved them for it! The reign of the tyrant Peisistratos at Athens was remembered as a Golden Age. The tyrant Periander of Corinth was remembered as one of the Seven Sages of Archaic Greece.
That is, until they became paranoid and started to attack random people, or until people began to develop the idea that maybe they should have more of a say in things, or until people stopped thinking that the tyrant in charge was the best guy for the job. That's why they ended up thinking about tyranny just like we do.