This is a recipe for discontent with democracy. Major crises like a severe economic recession can provide the tinder for citizen disaffection to crystallize into rage and inciting voters to throw out traditional political parties en masse. This discontent can ultimately lead to democratic demise, as inexperienced new political actors appeal to demagogy and dismantle longstanding institutions without building a more solidly democratic foundation.

Consider Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used bluster and constitutional reform to gut the checks and balances and military vetoes that previously hemmed in civilian politicians. The 1982 authoritarian constitution that guided Turkey’s 1983 transition to democracy created a constitutional court with the ability to ban political parties like Communists and overtly religious parties. The military maintained autonomy over its budget and decision-making. Perhaps most egregiously, the top military brass and their collaborators made sure there was a series of clauses and articles that granted them immunity from prosecution for any crimes during the authoritarian era. A result was that the military and their allies continued to enjoy economic privileges, like retaining ownership of key industries, while avoiding prosecution for human rights abuses.

In 1987, however, a major amendment to Turkey’s 1983 constitution lifted a ban on some outlawed opposition parties. This paved the way for the later rise of new parties like the Justice and Development Party, which, since the early 2000s, in the wake of a major economic crisis, has dominated Turkish politics. Indeed, under the J.D.P. banner, Mr. Erdogan was able to exploit the military’s reputation for impunity, as well as the dissatisfaction of clerics and conservative citizens in the Anatolian heartland with the ironclad separation of church and state imposed by the constitution and enforced by the military.

His populist economic policies have been wedded to a protracted campaign to consolidate the power of the executive branch, weaken the military (including jailing officers), empower Islamists, enervate individual liberties and the judiciary, and ultimately replace Turkey’s holdover constitution with his own. He achieved that much in 2017 after a popular referendum approved 18 amendments to the constitution, which transformed Turkey into a presidential system in which the executive exercises outsize power, including the ability to appoint the majority of judges and prosecutors.

Democratic erosion has followed a similar pattern in other countries as well. Hungary’s ever more authoritarian prime minister, Victor Orban, leveraged popular discontent with the country’s Communist-written constitution to renovate Hungarian political institutions with a new constitution in 2011. Mr. Orban’s reforms have hobbled the judiciary and cleared the way for his political party, Fidesz, to trample its opponents.

Fortunately, elite-biased democracies can successfully reform their social contracts over time to become more egalitarian and representative of average citizens rather than sliding back into dictatorship. It is not easy or common.

But if it is to be done, it tends to occur in the wake of these very same major crises or economic shocks. Mass citizen mobilization, when married to the material support of a faction of disaffected or disadvantaged elites, can succeed in amending or entirely rewriting democratic constitutions to eliminate the worst distortions to representation.

But this requires patience, magnanimous leadership and citizen faith in the promise of what democracy can deliver — all of which seem to be running increasingly short.