They're just victims of a long time autocracy, expecting a paternal state to solve all their problems.

Through some basic change, change like improving transparency, change like promoting self direction and collaboration, encouraging collaboration, not autocracy, the things like having a results focus.

But this correlation goes missing when one looks at the dimension of time rather than space. Countries that become democracies do not, on average, achieve faster economic growth after their political transition and, vice versa, democracies that fail and relapse into autocracy do not, on average, do worse than before.