Actually we ended up proving that democracies are pretty sticky - it is hard to go from a genuine democracy to a dictatorship, both because people don't like to lose power but also because if a significant group becomes unhappy with the way things are going they will get enough political power to change things within the current system.

In fact I don't know of a true democracy (defined here as a democracy where no group is excluded, where votes are counted fairly and where each person who wishes to do so can vote for whatever he wants) that has since transitioned into anything else.

None of this, of course, means that democracy is a good system, merely that it is sticky.