This realisation almost made me somewhat pessimistic about the fate of democracy. Leaders always have to do the bidding of their citizens to some extent - if t

This realisation almost made me somewhat pessimistic about the fate of democracy. Leaders always have to do the bidding of their citizens to some extent - if they cross the line too far, the citizens might overthrow them violently. They have incentive to respect democracy, because that will allow them to avoid physical violence when the citizens want to get rid of them. The flip side of that would be that this means that there's an equilibrium to be found, i.e. the point where citizens are not dissatisfied enough (but as close as possible to it) to revolt, or are not powerful enough to. In other words, we're getting less and less democratic in search of that equilibrium.