If you're smart and able leader as a citizen in that country you have three options: 1) leave to a better country (easy), 2) fight the system politically (really difficult), 3) ignore your morals and engage in graft directly as a politician or indirectly via enriching yourself via connections/bribes in gov as a private enterprise (semi-difficult since you're still competing with all of the less smart people who are smooth talkers or have entrenched/hereditary influence) or 4) violent revolutionary behaviour (almost impossible outside of external situations like war or regional conflict which can create the anarchy/power vacuums necessary for this to work).
1) and 3) are the biggest hurdles for these countries since most people never even try and just live their life. 3) is often the only path to any change as it continually generates new power players, while greasing the existing wheels as to not stop their momentum, and it's entirely possibly incrementally lesser evil people could take this route. Especially as education improve and economic difficulties create pressure on old broken systems/models which the next grafter might be less inclined to continue.
So if it's not going to be from the inside then it's only going to be external pressure - by other countries. Most foreign countries couldn't be bothered by a small, non-economically or militarily (state or Guerrilla) important country so few would make much of a risk intervening locally. Plus most of the surrounding countries in that region are very tolerant of dictators, so there will likely be more of the opposite pressure in the other direction, even if the west did care enough to counter it.
Then there's the whole immoral nature and high risk of backfiring of foreigners bumbling into a country without understanding local culture, glossing over the power of smaller ethnic tribes (unexpected if you're used to stable democratic government power), or often not building enough trust to legitimate offer the long-term commitment changing-seeking locals need to not face persecution later (as we repeatedly have seen in the Middle East and Africa for the last century).
It's a very difficult problem. A power vacuum after such a 'collapse' could work in their benefit. It could also just result in a worse situation depending on a whole bunch of circumstances. But it's still a better opportunity than hoping some smart guy tries to change the system from within, without getting chewed up and spat out first.