Empirically, autocratic regimes can last longer than democracies -- but there have been many more tried, so it's not clear if we're just witnessing expected out

Empirically, autocratic regimes can last longer than democracies -- but there have been many more tried, so it's not clear if we're just witnessing expected outliers. But the Roman empire lasted fifteen hundred years, while the republic only lasted five hundred -- as a classic example.