There doesn't have to be fair elections, but there's a limit on how obvious manipulations can be, especially in the long term, and it's also unlikely that every election down to the local level is rigged. So politicians still have an incentive to act in such a manner that they get voted into power, and then some of them are just rigged into key positions to have everything under control. But even under this conditions positions like cutting welfare and waste become impossible to hold for whoever wants to get rigged into power, because he wouldn't even make it in local elections, and also would make it too obvious that everyone just hates him.