If you liked Stross’s general style, I would also recomend the Merchant Princes (universe hopping smugglers/spies/couriers) and the Laundry Files (co.puter scientists and mathematicians as civil servants fighting against the occult)

This sentiment ignores that there is more to the government than the president and that the president is not (currently) a dictator.

(The conservatives in the judiciary seem primed to make the presidency a dictatorship, but won’t do it while a Democrat is on office)