I'm not sure that works for democracy. Autocracy is basically the default human state. All it takes to build it back up is a sufficiently powerful faction. Democracy is relatively fragile by comparison and requires more specific initial conditions - I would make the argument that democracies are the lower entropy condition.

Ask the Germans what happens when a democracy degenerates.

That's a good example. The west forced reconstruction of German democracy. If the Nazi state had been less aggressive it might have still been around today as a North Korea style autocratic state.