Again, from Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Volume I, The Structures of Everyday Life, Fernand Braudel, translated by Sian Reynolds. 1981:-
Maize is a miraculous plant; it grows quickly and its grain is edible even before it is ripe. ... Easily obtained, what is more, for maize has always been a crop that demands little effort. The archaeologist Fernando Márquez Miranda has given us an excellent account of the advantages enjoyed by peasants cultivating maize: it required them to work only fifty days in the year, one day in seven or eight, according to season. They were therefore free, perhaps a little too free. The maize-growing societies on the irrigated terraces of the Andes or on the lakesides of the Mexican plateaux resulted in theocratic totalitarian systems and all the leisure of the peasants was used for gigantic public works of the Egyptian type. (It is arguable whether the cause was indeed maize, or irrigation, or the dense population of societies which became oppressive from sheer weight of numbers.) Without maize, the giant Mayan or Aztec pyramids, the cyclopean walls of Cuzco or the wonders of Machu Pichu would have been impossible. They were achieved because maize virtually produces itself. ... The problem then is that on one hand we have a series of striking achievements, on the other, human misery.
The living standard of ancient Greeks were low, so an average person in one of the Greek ancient city states only needed to work around 100 days in a year to earn a basic living. They had lots of free time to participate in their civic duties and their democracy.
I therefore don’t see any correlation between easy life and the form of government.