Since we know that people have a natural inclination to eschew engagement and are not well suited to engage in confrontation, I seek to better understand the actionable qualities of democratic engagement or withdrawal in newly formed democracies. Who commits to democratic practice and under what conditions do people accept authority? To answer this question develop equilibrium models of democratic consolidation to explain the behavior of the public in a two-person game between the public and the sovereign. I test for two different classes of belief learning, a “Bayesian Performance Update Model” and an “Affective Stimulus Model.” Using micro-data from Slovenia I find evidence that beliefs about democratic practice are largely formed through affective stimuli with little evidence for government performance evaluation. Democratic action itself is a function of two inter and independent forces, affect driven beliefs and affective appraisal of the sovereign.
