Because the legitimacy of the state is dependent on performance, authoritarian states that fail to adapt may collapse.

Is it in our interest that the Russian central state should collapse?

If it hadn't, a state teetering on the edge would certainly have collapsed.

Weak states that had been propped up by foreign aid and outside military assistance quickly collapsed.

The state and the army are now collapsing.

Hardly anyone thought that the fearsome state could collapse so quickly.

In the early sixth century the Urartian state, under constant foreign invasion, collapsed.

But a great state like the Soviet Union will not collapse easily.

What history is being taught now that the Soviet state had collapsed?

The situation in Alodia is less well known, but it also seems as though that state had collapsed.