In 1984 and Brave New World, we saw extremely effective authoritarian governments of different sorts.
While of course elements of those books exist in our structures today, there is one key difference: Western governments, and western elite, are now incompetent. They have inherited a once meritocratic, productive system, and turned it into precisely the opposite.
Despite this, the authoritarian impulses of these fools are increasing. In the U.S. the power of the federal government has correlated precisely with its decreasing competence. Garbage public schools, useless regulations, terrible laws which every citizen violates 5+ of which every day, leading to the dysfunctional anarcho-tyranny which we now live in.
Does anyone know any books or media which actually got this right? I'm guessing maybe cyberpunk/corporatist dystopias?
"We" is a Russian take on 1984, using their knowledge of how their corrupt and broken government would be reflected in such a takeover gambit. And as a Russian take on it, it's much less optimistic than 1984 or Brave New World.
It's not quite what you're looking for, but the military and secret police run the government in it, not the other way around, so it's semi-close.