Authoritarianism is the path of least resistance, no how-to manual required. Democracy requires constant care and course correction or it slowly trends towards authoritarianism. Unfortunately "constant care and course correction" equates to people getting out, voting, participating in their state and local governments, etc. Most people don't like to think about that stuff so they just leave it to others.

I'm sure there's some underlying universal principle related to entropy. You see the same with code bases. Unless you are diligent about caring for and correcting things, every large code base will eventually become a steaming pile of tech debt after a few decades.