Inglehart, Ronald. "Democracy and happiness: what causes what?". In Happiness, Economics and Politics: Towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach, edited by Amitava Krishna Dutt and Benjamin Radcliff, 256-270, Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.

Inglehart, Ronald. "Democracy and happiness: what causes what?". In Happiness, Economics and Politics: Towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach, edited by Amitava Krishna Dutt and Benjamin Radcliff, 256-270, Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.

• Before the third wave of democratization during the late 1980s, numerous studies have demonstrated high levels of correlation between levels of democracy, as measured by Freedom House, and rates of subjective well-being. This could indicate that democracy causes happiness, or that happy people are more likely to form democracies, or that both are caused by a tangential factor like high levels of human development (256).
• There are some measured qualities of democracy which would thrive with happier publics. Support for democratic institutions and higher levels of social capital are both necessary for successful democracy, implying that happier citizens would be more likely to produce healthy democracies (256-257).
• Individuals are more likely to be happy if they have created control over their lives, a condition of democratic society. However, other factors, such as declining economic or social opportunities can reverse this trend. Overall, the data shows stronger evidence that happy people create democracies versus democracies create happiness (259).
• The high rates of correlation between happiness and democracy in the 1980s could have indicated a direct causal relationship between democracy and happiness. However, the fact that Eastern European countries have had stable or diminished levels of happiness in the 1990s despite democratization questions that hypothesis (258. 260-263).
• An analysis of correlations between democracy and happiness before and after the third wave finds that, although democracy and happiness were strongly correlated during the 1980s, they are only weakly correlated during the 1990s. Economic growth and the degree to which a society values self-expression have much more impact on levels of happiness than does the level of democracy (266-267).
• In other parts of the world, there are more substantial links between the level of happiness and democratization. Mexico and Argentina both display strong correlation between the end of one-party or military rule and rising rates of happiness. Similar increases are also observed in South Africa after apartheid and South Korea after the end of military rule (263-265).