I was thinking about this, and I think the key thing that's missing from the in-game imperial and iqta governments is the idea of a bureaucracy that sends taxes up to the top, which then pays it down to a national army. Viceroys/iqta are tax-farming systems, where you hand off a chunk of land and let the governor raise troops off the land's tax revenues. So this is similar to the pronoia of the later Byzantine military (and, as far as I understand it, is also pretty accurate for the iqta system). But a true bureaucratic government would mean national armies funded from the central government, and demilitarized provinces.
So the trade-off here is that a bureaucracy doesn't have to worry about vassal management in the feudal sense, but they need to micromanage the military carefully, curb the influence of generals and ministers, and protect their brittle and top-heavy form of government from disasters. Standing armies are strong, but expensive, and not as numerous as levies. They can't be everywhere at once, and your territory is vulnerable wherever your troops are away. And you can never rule out a palace coup or a military putsch.
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