I think it's a general vulnerability of democracies when things go sideways. Hardships bring fear for oneself and fear for oneself is psychological reason why

I think it's a general vulnerability of democracies when things go sideways. Hardships bring fear for oneself and fear for oneself is psychological reason why people are conservative and right-wing. Those people vote in right-wing parties. And leaders of those parties are not very smart because position they achieved is solely due to psychology of their voters, not actually earned by their own political merits. So the only way those leaders can imagine for retaining power is to dismantle democracy that handed them this power on a silver plate. If they only cultivated fear in the populace they won over (whist avoiding the blame for the hardships) and create political alliances to avoid being replaced with somebody more right-winged they could retain power indefinitely.