The major cause of modern crisis are the individual choices people have been making along history's course. Democracy allows people to choose their leaders, so if these leaders aren't performing as desired, why are people still voting and supporting them?
You can take any countries as example. People are constantly complaining about economical and social crisis, but at same time they defend politicians with enthusiasm, they idolize politicians.
Of course nothing will ever be fixed this way, because politicians feel safe to put in practice measures to benefit themselves, while neglecting the demands and needs of the population. There aren't negative consequences for them, so why would they change their actions?
The reality is that democracy is a system that has a very short lifespan, and this is because even if at some point a country and it citizens allowed a democracy to flourish, once an individual gains power, it is completely natural that individual will want to retain that power for themselves and others like him, so cheating the elections or at least to influence them on their favor is very common, and before you realize it the democratic process is still supposedly in place, but the democracy itself has died and only a small group of people control the country from that point on.