"The onus for backsliding belongs on those leaders who gain power for a wide range of reasons, including in many cases by promising to renovate democracy, but then once in power relentlessly amass unconstrained power by overriding countervailing institutions and undercutting basic democratic norms and procedures. Backsliding in these cases is thus less about a failure of democracy to deliver than about a failure of democracy to constrain—that is, to curb the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders."

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930425