Apathy may be something that grows with time as well. It seems to me (though I don't have much evidence to back it up so I welcome being shown I'm wrong) that a lifespan of a functioning democracy is ~100 years. The people who shed blood for it care. Their children are taught to care as well. But the grand-grand-children, born into a working system, don't have any context of how it was before that would give them motivation to care and perform required maintenance. And then, the system starts to degrade.