Conveniently this kinda came up on a recent essay I did for college. For most of the 19th century, the measure of a state's goodness wasn't in the form of government but in its efficiency and centralisation. "Democracy" and "dictatorship" weren't particularly relevant labels in political science, not as much as they are today. France, Britain, the USA and Germany looked down on countries like Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Austria Hungary for being inefficient, rather than undemocratic. The state in these inefficient countries wasn't omnipresent, laws weren't universal, some regions and minorities had privileges while others were rejected by the state. Many disparate peoples of these countries didn't feel a sense of loyalty, belonging or patriotism. Institutions such as schools and banks didn't reach many rural areas, and didn't have much engagement from the lower classes. Militaries were unbalanced, with officers being nepotistically appointed rather than by merit. Modern infrastructure like railroads and dams didn't reach far outside of the most populated cities. Industry was focused in a few cities, such as Moscow and Petrograd in Russia. I want to emphasise that these are the views of elite political scientists at the time, and not necessarily accurate or normatively correct.

Basically, the development of civil society was seen as more important than the development of human rights and democracy. I read an article which I'm now having trouble sharing, but it was called "The subjectivity of the" democratic" peace: changing US perceptions of imperial Germany" by Ido Oren, so it should be easy enough to find. Oren says that Woodrow Wilson in particular praised the German Empire's state as efficient, with educated bureaucrats and a strong central state. It wasn't until Wilson was preparing for the USA to enter the Great War that the perception of Germany as undemocratic really began to take hold. It became a propaganda tool and, given how Wilson was the most influential US president of the 20th century, really stuck around. His foreign policy of "spreading democracies" ie, spawing a bunch of states into eastern Europe and saying "look, they're democracies!" formed the basis for US foreign policy till this day, and his perception of democracy came with it.