In general, systems with this attitude (that rights are conditional on the goodness of the subject) wind up with a criminal at the top putting people they disagree with in jail.
That said, those effects manifest in the long run. In the short run, choosing autocratic simplicity is rational. It’s just that it explains why some systems yo-yo between corrupt autocracy and weak populism with islands of stability in between—getting liberal democracy to work takes patience and skill.
They’re just harder to build and maintain: “get a better strong guy to strongarm the last strong guy who went rotten” makes more instinctive sense than “swallow the bitter medicine of compromise and spread power around.”
I’d go further: they have. But that requires both investment into those resources and patience. (Consider all the comments on even HN whenever wrongdoing is exposed confidently predicting there will be no consequences. Then, when they’re charged, that they won’t be arrested. Then that they won’t be convicted. Then that sentencing will be light. Then that it will get overturned on appeal. Now imagine the entire country thinks like that—there is no patience for due process.)
It’s more difficult for a poor country to transition to liberal democracy than benign autocracy. The only ones I can think of did so under occupation or in the wake of a traumatic dictator and/or civil war (see: Uruguay, India, and going way back, the United Kingdom).