Any system of government that does not depend on an inherently limited government based on individual freedom has to achieve some form of balance between being autocratic (central control) and too permissive (cronyism).
In essence none have achieved this balance and often never can.
The dose of medicine that brought them to favor one group over another disturbs the society sufficiently that either a power imbalance or increase is the result or there has to be more welfare or payments or redistribution of some kind.
See Europe for a good example of the latter and Russia for an example of the former.
This is what lead Milton Friedman and other free market economists to say that there is no stable point for a mixed economy, the version of the economy that we are now in and seeking with Obama to increase central control.
Government Motors is not doing well and yet the Unions are happy for they were handed a good chunk of the company while the investors were essentially screwed. For Obama to take credit for the tax payers bailing out GM is essentially like saying that he knows what is best for the economy, while the distributed intelligence of the market place runs ahead. See technology companies.
Ineptocracy is a given in the mixed economy, for having the higher moral ground of the liberal left take control with no sense of what is optimal, just what they want to control, leaves us all wondering why we are asleep during the decision to place them in power.