society upheaval as you said. if youre a country in a geopolitical hotspot then for leaving poverty you need a dictatorship or monarchy unless you want to wait for 40+ years like countries that have the luxury of not being situated in geopolitical hotspots (the red sea, north africa etc).
keep in mind, pre-mao china was basically centuries of subjugation by mongols, manchurians and then japanese. gumaysi over those long periods of time is fertile groundwork for "revolutionaries" to enforce insane reforms top down. an entire culture doesn't change overnight. i use this example because these sorts of radical cultural reforms are the high risk high reward ones proven to work independently, sorta the same with the ex soviet nations and how they got raped by mongols.
many of these authoritarian developmentalist projects fail without strong commitment from a superpower like the USA.
on the other end of the spectrum you have the gulf, where tribes agreed on one clans legitimacy and have them keep the peace. idk why people don't discount them but they're in the biggest geopolitical hotspot and they're doing more than fine. compare what they have now to all the arab republics and iran and you'll get it.
ideally just have the country be run by it's business people and wait like 40 years, let the politicians be puppets