THE JOYLESS POLITY: CONTRIBUTIONS OF DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES TO ILL-BEING There is a malaise haunting advanced market democracies throughout the world, a malaise that mocks the 18th Century guarantee of a right to the pursuit of happiness under benign governments of people's own choosing. The malaise is manifold: a rising tide of clinical depression and dysphoria, especially among the young, increasing distrust of each other and of our political (and other) institutions, an apparent decline in warm, intimate relations, and the tragic erosion of family solidarity. We are not the first generation to be suspicious of each other (in spite of T”nnies, gemeinschaft revealed plenty of that) and certainly not the first to distrust our institutions (currently Russia and recently Weimar are and were more suspicious) but we may be the first to monitor these disturbances with such care -- and idly to watch them pass by. Is the current malaise a sign of the end of an era, of revolutionary sentiments? Certainly not: the ethos of modern market democracies is curiously marked by strong beliefs in the legitimacy, if not the practices, of its democratic institutions. Nor is this malaise like that long withdrawing roar of the formidable turn-of- the-century German trio, Nordau, Spengler, Nietzsche (and Weber?: this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved ). Like Marx, when our colleagues write about the end of history, they mean something good has happened. How shall we account for this combination of growing depression, interpersonal and institutional distrust, and weakened companionship in advanced market democracies where people are, with important exceptions, reasonably well-off, the populations of these countries do not press against their resources, they can expect to live longer than their parents and their old age is reasonably protected, there is (or was) a safety net to catch them if they lose their jobs or become ill, their children are not likely to die in childhood and these children have available to them more educational facilities than were available to their parents? Politically, they are endowed with rights unknown to their parents; they do not live in police states but rather have some assurance of due process of law; and they are offered reasonably adequate opportunities to participate in political decisions affecting their own fates. Moreover, it is a hedonic gain, I think, to substitute ecological doomsday for theological doomsday -- because it is less invidious and less guilt-ridden. But have we not traveled this route before: the prolonged whinging, to use a British expression, about alienation in the 1960s? Those whimpering complaints were but an (unsatisfactory) prelude to the data-based analyses that were to follow. In what follows I will first present some evidence on the disturbing increase in clinical depression in the United States and other advanced (and rapidly advancing) countries and follow this with evidence on related ills and possible causes. The next section deals with the symptoms of political negativity which have also increased over the past three decades climaxing, it seems, in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections. I will then turn to an identification of democratic processes that seem to exacerbate the cheerlessness, to say the least, of U.S. and other citizens. In this treatment my main hypothesis emerges: democratic processes are generally painful, fail to contribute to good cheer in democratic publics and do very little to relieve what seems to be an epidemic of depression. After discussing the effects of unhappiness and happiness on citizen competence, I conclude with some observations on the inevitability of democratic pain and the close connection of general to political malaise. Of the two political aspects to this question, the effect of democratic processes on sense of well-being, and the effect of political outcomes, in this paper I will treat only the processes. I.THE RISE OF DEPRESSION AND OTHER ILLS Consider some evidence on a rising tide of depression in economically advanced democracies. In some [advanced] countries the likelihood that people born after 1955 will suffer a major depression -- not just sadness, but a paralyzing listlessness, dejection and self-deprecation, as well as an overwhelming sense of hopelessness -- at some point in life is more than three times greater than for their grandparents' generation (Goleman 1992, C1). A nine nation study under the direction of Myrna Weissman finds that this epidemic is characteristic of rapidly modernizing countries, like Taiwan, as well as advanced economies like Germany and New Zealand (Cross- National Collaborative Group 1992). Since World War II, each succeeding generation in these advanced and rapidly advancing countries is more likely to be depressed, for, said Seligman, depression has not only been getting more frequent in modern times, but it occurs much earlier in life the first time (Seligman in Buie 1988, 18) While the United States is not the most depressed country in the world (Weissman et al. 1993), it may be on its way to that infelicitous rank. On the basis of two earlier (1982, 1985) epidemiological studies in the United States funded by the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration and involving a total of about 12,000 people, a U.S. rate of increase much higher than the rates of other countries seems evident: people born after 1945 were 10 times more likely to suffer from depression than people born 50 years earlier (Seligman in Buie 1988, 18). Myrna Weissman and associates report research covering five sites in the United States with similar, but less startling, results. These authors find an increasing risk of depression at some point in life for younger Americans. For example, of those Americans born before 1955, only one percent had suffered a major depression by age 75; of those born after 1955 six percent had become depressed by age 24 (Weissman et al. 1991). This finding corresponds to an earlier report of a six-year study tracking 956 American men and women: those under 40 were three times more likely to become severely depressed than were older groups (Goleman 1992, C3). Weissman and associates suggest that now about a quarter of the population experiences some of the clinical symptoms of depression during some portion of their lifetimes (Weissman et al. 1991, 64). Because all mental illness is painful, it is relevant that in 1994 Ronald Kessler and associates (Kessler et al. 1994) reports evidence showing that during their lifetimes almost half of the population (48%) will experience some kind of mild or severe mental illness of which major depression is the most common. Studies of mood disorders in children are even more disturbing. For example one study in Britain finds a 42 percent increase of mood disorders from 1985 to 1990 among children under ten years of age (McKerrow in Lewis 1993). Reports from the United States indicate similar increased childhood rates, adding that childhood depression is a strong indicator of later depression in adulthood (Lewinsohn et al. 1993; Klerman 1989). Since children of the depressed are much more likely themselves to be depressed (Weissman et al. 1988), a malign, self-reinforcing cycle seems to envelope us. Major depression is not just a matter of mood. The recently standardized test for depression used in the nine nation study mentioned above includes such further criteria as insomnia, loss of energy, loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, feelings of worthlessness, self-reproach, or excessive or inappropriate guilt, and recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, wishes to be dead, or suicide. One classic formulation focuses on the trinity: hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness (Beck 1967). Although depression and anxiety are separate illnesses, most research reports link the two. Hopelessness is said by some to be the key variable (Beck et al. 1975). Let us take a skeptical moment to question the reliability and validity of these studies of rising depression. One reason for questioning them is that rates of adult suicides do not track reports of rising depression and, in any event, are more prevalent among males whereas depression is more characteristic of females (an imbalance which, however, is changing). On the other hand, evidence of suicide attempts and of teen-age suicides (the latter increasing in the United States by 40 percent from 1970 to 1990 and by similar amounts in other advanced countries) do support the rising tide of depression hypothesis, which locates the increase in depression among the young (Kovacs et al. 1993). Another reason for skepticism is that, although measures of subjective well-being (happiness, satisfaction with life-as-a-whole) are, as we might expect, closely and inversely related to depression at any one time (Abbey and Andrews 1986), over time they do not track the measures of rising depression. I believe that this discrepancy between simultaneous and diachronic measures is because the happiness measures are more sensitive to the adaptation phenomenon whereby people take as a standard their current or very recent moods, whereas the depression measures are not similarly sensitive. In any event, the measures of depression are more reliable than the simpler measures of happiness (in general surveys, often tapped by a single question). Other reasons for believing that the measures of rising depression are both reliable and valid are: (1) reliability of self-reports of depressive episodes has been demonstrated in careful retests of depression assessments after a four year period (Prusoff et al. 1988); (2) the studies of depression do not rely on visits to therapists (which are contaminated by self-selection) but rather on massive surveys of the general public; (3) independent studies using the same standardized instruments come to the same conclusions; (4) physical symptoms (fatigue, eating disorders) which are less vulnerable to fashionable illnesses support the diagnoses; (5) studies of children, who are not aware of what they should report, also support the diagnoses; and (6) instead of an overcount of cases of depression, there may well be an undercount due to the prevalence of masked depression (Talley 1986). The Loss of Close Human Ties The main pathologies that are both causes and symptoms of depression have to do with failing interpersonal relations Some of them are well-known: the break-up of the family and consequent increase of single-parent families and irresponsible parenting (although changes in child-abuse are still uncertain). Some pathologies are less familiar: Putnam (1995, 73) reports a post war trend revealed by the General Social Survey asking: Some say that most people can be trusted while others say that you can't be too careful in dealing with people. Which do you believe? From 1960 to 1993 there has been a steady downward trend from a high point in 1960 when 58 percent said they trust most people to a low in 1993 when only 37 percent revealed such trust. Since trust is closely related to measures of happiness (Veenhoven 1993, 59), and since depression is characterized by suspicion and distrust, there seems to be a more general malaise at work in modern market democracies. This is all the more troubling because, in general, interpersonal trust rises with economic development (Inkeles & Diamond 1980, 97) and is associated with political development (Almond and Verba 1965, 63-64). As for social integration, House (1986. 267) reports that consistent evidence up to 1976 indicates that the prevalence of significant informal social relationships, networks, and supports has been declining over the last quarter century while people are increasingly calling on those same sources of support for help in dealing with personal problems. Belonging to a variety of voluntary groups (e.g., fraternal orders, sports groups, church related groups and the League of Women Voters) is at least associated with a lowered vulnerability to depression and recent evidence shows that these memberships have declined over the post-war period. Summarizing a variety of types of voluntary group memberships Putnam (1995, 72) finds that in spite of demographic trends that have normally been associated with greater membership, aggregate associational membership appears to be stagnant or declining. Church attendance is related to subjective well-being and to lower vulnerability to depression (Ross 1990) and in the 1960s there was a sharp decline in church attendance followed by a plateau at a lower level. Putnam (1996, 69) also reports the results of the General Social Survey on frequency of visiting with neighbors: in 1974 72 percent of the public said they visited with their neighbors more than once a year but in 1993 only 61 percent engaged in this form of socializing (Putnam 1995, 73). It seems that the political negativity we are about to examine is lodged in societies that exhibit a variety of symptoms of unhappiness, depression, distrust, social deintegration and other features of a more general malaise. II. POLITICAL CRITICALITY and NEGATIVITY: DO THEY MAKE PEOPLE UNHAPPY? The focus of this paper is on the way democracies promote pain and pleasure, happiness and depression. Whatever political negativity may do to the felicitous functioning of political systems (and there is a substantial literature on this), we want to know if it hurts the individuals who possess and exhibit it. For this purpose, I would like to distinguish four meanings among the various attitudes in this negative set. Criticality is largely cognitive and means a tendency to criticize some particular set of objects, in this case politics. Our most distinguished democratic founders would surely exemplify it. Negativity is more affective and refers to a pervasive tendency to respond toward the world in terms of critical, deprecatory, and even hostile opinions. Negativity has already been defined as part of the major depression syndrome and is recognized in personality research as negative affectivity (Watson et al. 1986). In line with my interest in happiness and depression, I would like to borrow from learning theory another term, aversiveness, to refer to the pain or hurt that is experienced by a person holding an opinion or expressing an attitude. Thus, the common feelings of envy, jealousy, or even hostility can, but need not, be hurtful feelings that a person would rather not have. Finally, I will want to refer to the contribution to a person's overall sense of well-being of an opinion, whether favorable or unfavorable. For that purpose I will refer to the aversive weight of an evaluation or an opinion. It is measured in the quality of life studies by partial correlations with a criterial measure of satisfaction with life-as- a-whole, or of happiness, or some other index of subjective well- being.Correspondingly, I avoid such popular terms as alienation and cynicism except as others use them. We may now briefly examine some expressions of political criticality and negativity, assess whether it is only a continuation of a long history of criticality or something more deep-seated and serious, and try to understand its aversiveness. Incidence, Persistence, and Scope of Current Distrust of Institutions Modern criticality may be more like negativity, a pervasive contempt for specific democratic institutions, an attitude which, as I will show, is moderately aversive. If, from among the various concepts of political negativity, one takes the simple question of confidence (or trust) in political institutions and their leaders, the continuing flow of post-1960s evidence, summarized in Table 1, tells us an important story: Table 1. Percent Reporting A Great Deal of Confidence in the Leaders of Political Institutions, by Year Change 1966- 1971- 1973- 1974- 1977- 1980- 1985- 1990- 1971-73 Institution1967 1973 1974 1977 1980 1984 1989 1992 1990-92 Exec. Branch Fed.Govt 39 26 15 18 17 21 18 14 -12 Congress 42 21 21 15 16 19 18 10 -11 I will offer only a few notes on these data. The lack of trust is not marked by partisan differences (Taylor 1992, 3); although the distrust, has historically been correlated with unemployment and inflation (Lipset & Schneider 1983, 61-66) and modified by victory in war, in the above array distrust appears to be immune to the prosperity of the later 1980s and even to the remarkable victory in the Gulf War of 1991. In any event, later data show a sharp departure between economic misery (combined inflation and unemployment scores) and distrust of government after 1981 (Putnam 1994). The highest trust for both the executive branch and Congress occurs in the earliest period recorded, that is, during the Vietnam War, the urban riots, and the student protest movements; the lowest trust is in the most recent period reported (exacerbated by the first two years of the Clinton administration). One important inference emerges: while vulnerable to history and economic cycles, political negativity is not just a transient phenomenon; it is a persistent characteristic of post- 1966 culture. And it is significant that its origin dates from about the same period as does the epidemic of depressive symptoms in America. The discussion of this political distrust (sometimes called cynicism ) marks out two schools: some, like Arthur Miller (1974) and E. J. Dionne (1991), holding that the expressions of distrust represent a new and disturbing cynicism or alienation from political life. Others, like Citrin (1974) and Lipset and Schneider (1983), point to the expressions of faith in the political system and hold that these criticisms are merely verbalizing a casual and ritualistic negativism rather than an enduring sense of estrangement that influences their beliefs and actions (Citrin 1974, 975). They might support their views by reference to a long record of similar criticism and alarm. Thus Thomas Paine (1897 [1776], 7) reported that Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. . . [Government] is a punisher. Jefferson considered legislatures to be the political bodies most to be feared. About forty years later Tocqueville (1945 [1835], II 330) commented that Americans are prone to despise and hate those who wield power and to elude its grasp as best they can. Just before the first World War, Bryce (1910, II 352) observed that Americans tended to believe most legislation was presumptively bad and as many bills as possible should be killed. In 1913 Lowell (130-131) held that the recent distrust of legislatures was characteristic of all democracies.... [and] the American people are drifting towards a general loss of faith in representative government. In our own time, the anthropologist, Geoffrey Gorer (1955, 225), said: with practically no exceptions, Americans regard their own governments as alien; they do not identify themselves with it, do not consider themselves involved in its actions, feel free to criticize it and despise it. Thus, in the revolutionary period, in the early 19th century, before the first World War, during the 1950s, and, as mentioned, in the alienated 1960s, American distrust of government was widely exemplified and reported. Two kinds of tests might help to resolve this controversy: Does political negativity extend to other democratic societies? And: Does negativity extend to non-political domains? Like the rising tide of depression, the rising tide of political criticality is common throughout the advanced counties of the world. For example, at the 1993 meeting of the G7, all of the political leaders had low confidence ratings in their respective countries. In Great Britain , political criticality also embraces political negativity. Hugo Young, a respected commentator, reported (The Guardian, 15 July 1993, 20) on the failings of parliament in the following terms: It deceives people as to what is possible; it makes our leaders say things they know to be untrue; it fathers false promises, especially in elections; it buys present comfort at the expense of future pain, [it is] the disease of all politicians but none more easily infected than the British. In 1989 when a national sample was asked to register its satisfaction or dissatisfaction with 20 national institutions (Jacobs & Worcester 1990, 67-68), Government Ministers ranked fourth from the bottom (26% satisfied; 47% dissatisfied), and Parliament itself ranked only a little better (28% satisfied; 45% dissatisfied). As the authors of the study reported: The institutions which rank lowest in public satisfaction are all political. The rest of Europe lags, but is little different. The papers (Hayward 1995) at the First Europaeum Conference (1993) on Are Elites Losing Touch With their Publics? suggested considerable concern about the loss of trust in European publics. After a period of rising trust from 1959 to 1981, the level of public trust in parliaments maintained a fairly steady level in the 1981-1990 period (Inglehart & Rabier 1986, 54; Ashford and Timms 1992, 92) and then, as measured by questions dealing with people's satisfaction with the way democracy works in each country, political trust sharply declined (Putnam 1994, 18-19). By this test of generality, arguments based on a unique American distrust of government or of unique American political institutions begin to fade. Something more characteristic of the culture of modernity in market democracies seems to be at work. If the negativity were only toward politics, as in the pre-Populist period of American history, it would be somewhat less plausible to link popular negativity to some underlying mood of unhappiness or depression. But, in fact, the American negativity is much more general, as we may see in Table 2. Table 2. Percent Reporting A Great Deal of Confidence in the Leaders of TV & Business, by Year 1971- 1980- 1985- 1990- Change Institution 1966 1979 1984 1989 1992 1970s to 1990s Television news NA 36 26 26 23 -13 Major companies 55 22 17 18 13 -9 [Source: Taylor, The American Angst, 3] Again we see a sharp drop in the 1966-1970s period and a variable but continuing decline in confidence since that time. And again the earliest period shows the greatest confidence and the most recent period reported the least. We now see that we cannot speak only of political negativity for both the once trusted television news and the major corporations have lost popular confidence. One other feature of this generalized distrust is notable: whereas liberals and conservatives have both seen government and business as alternative agencies for delivering goods, suggesting that as confidence in one of these agencies decreases the confidence in the other should increase, in fact the two indices of confidence move up and down together. This is important for two reasons: (1) It suggests that changes in confidence vary, not with alternating political or ideological preferences, as Hirschman (1982) has suggested, but with larger swings of a more generalized malaise, as Lane (1979) has argued. And (2) the result of this parallel movement is increased difficulty in selecting between the two agencies according to some concept of which will do better in solving the problems at hand. As noted, the post-1980 evidence disposes of the argument that variations in distrust flow largely from economic changes in unemployment and inflation. I propose that business and political negativity move together because people know only that they are miserable, not why. A. D. Lindsay said the benefit of democracy stemmed from the public's knowledge of where the shoe pinches. Perhaps, but I suspect the public knows only that its feet hurt . Whether the pain comes from a clot upstream, chilblains, or lack of exercise is mysterious to most people. The Relation Between Depression and Political Negativity What is the relation between the depression or unhappiness and political negativity? Conceptually, there is an affinity. As mentioned, depression is more than a mood; in addition to melancholy and listlessness, depression is marked by the trinity mentioned above: helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness or low self-esteem. Whereas political criticality is not necessarily associated with any of these, political negativity is generally thought to imply two of the three, hopelessness and helplessness -- but not necessarily low self-esteem. In support of the thesis that increased depression and political negativity are at least congruent, we should note that internal political efficacy (a rough measure of political helplessness ) has declined since the 1960s and external political efficacy (an even rougher measure of loss of hope that the political system will respond to one's own or to national needs) has declined more drastically in this same period. As we have seen, trust in government, reflecting a general negatitivity syndrome, has substantially declined just as depression has increased. The relationship between depression/unhappiness and political negativity may also be roughly assessed by examining the prevalence of the two pathologies in selected publics. Some correspondence is indicated: compared to men, women are more depressed, less efficacious and have lower trust in government; lower income and lower education groups are also more depressed and also disproportionately less efficacious and less trusting; African-Americans, while not more depressed, are unhappier and more dysphoric than whites; they are also less efficacious and, by the 1980s, less trusting. But age cohorts diverge: compared to older people, the young are now (but not before 1960) more depressed and also less satisfied with their lives, but not consistently less efficacious or trusting in government (Miller and Traugott 1989). With some important exceptions, both conceptually and demographically there are enough correspondences between the two pathologies to suggest common symptoms and overlapping publics, but, without further exploration I now want to search for some political causes of unhappiness. Fortunately, we can go a little way in this direction: Does political negativity make people unhappy? Is Political Negativity Aversive? If critical opinions have a broad focus, apply to the main institutions of society as well as to politics, are not mere repetitions of common slogans and thus represent quasi-autonomous beliefs, they are likely to be at least associated with lower subjective well-being and may be one of its minor causes; they may also represent a contribution to or even an element of depression (Mirowsky & Ross 1986). For example, political negativity is associated with the belief that most people can't be trusted and that distrust also applies to political representatives (Rosenberg 1956). In turn, distrust of one's fellow human beings, at least in cross-national studies, is known to be strongly and negatively correlated with happiness (r= -.61, Veenhoven 1993, 69). The depressed are notoriously suspicious of others. The quality of life studies relate evaluations of government and other aspects of life to overall feelings of well-being. The evaluations themselves are instructive. For example, in the early 1970s respondents in two national samples tended to rank as the least satisfying aspects of their lives the way our national government is operating; what our government is doing about the economy; our national military activities; the way our political leaders think and act; and how the United States stands in the eyes of the rest of the world. In the verbal descriptors of these scores, delighted is almost exclusively employed to describe family life and friends while terrible is used chiefly to characterize political and governmental life (Andrews & Withey 1976, 124,127-28). The aversiveness of these opinions is measured by their contribution to an overall measure of well-being (what I called aversive weight above). The low evaluations just reported seem at first to be only weakly related to these overall measures of subjective well-being. Thus, in Andrews and Withey's (1976, 127-28) study of the sources of satisfaction with your life-as-a-whole, out of 30 sets of concerns, the index of concern with the national government ranked only 11th, contributing only 7 percent (beta) to the variance explained by 30 items, but by reducing the roster of concerns considered to 12, the national government index ranks sixth and explains a little more of the variance and if the method of calculation used is a stepwise regression, evaluation of national government adds more to the predictive power of the roster than, say, the things you do with your family which previously seemed more important in explaining satisfaction with life-as-a-whole. Thus, even though attitudes toward government are probably too remote from the self to have important consequences for most people's sense of well-being, negativity toward government does seem to reduce life satisfaction by some small margin. III.THE CHEERLESSNESS OF DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES In examining the contribution of democratic processes to the evident feelings of ill-being that trouble the citizens of our republic, we must neglect the contributions of outcomes which the processes produce. Nevertheless, it seems that dissatisfaction with outcomes tends to lead to dissatisfaction with processes and that dissatisfaction with processes, in turn, tend to outweigh satisfaction and to become negativity. Process and Outcome Theoretically, people might be satisfied with democratic processes but not with the policy outcomes of the democratic governments they know. Or vice versa. Thus one might think of four types as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1.Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction with Political Processes and Outcomes (a) (b) Satisfied with Outcomes Dissatisfied with Outcomes (c) Satisfied with Democratic (A) (B) Processes Complacents Political Critics (d) Dissatisfied with Democratic (C) (D) Processes Undemocrats Political Negatives By dissatisfied with democratic processes I do not mean favoring a particular form of democratic process over the present one, but rather holding elections, politicians, parties, legislatures to be objects of ridicule, deriding them, and holding them in contempt even though a person who holds these views may at the same time endorse democratic systems in an abstract way. There are very few complacents (A) in democratic societies for almost everyone who refers at all to politics has some policy preference which is unsatisfied. In this paper our concern is with those dissatisfied with the democratic process, the undemocrats and the political negatives. The relation between outcome dissatisfaction and process dissatisfaction is as follows: attitudes toward the democratic process dominates attitudes toward outcomes because: (1) bad outcomes will be more readily explained by bad processes than vice versa, for, as in other mean-ends relations, processes come before and are thought to cause their outcomes, (2) processes are treated as morally sacred (divine right, constitutionally sanctioned) whereas outcomes are generally (though not always) treated as policy preferences, and (3) processes are perceptually salient whereas outcomes are more opaque, diffuse and obscure. The news is about processes (elections, scandals, conflict) and we know that whatever is vivid and immediate dominates the more pallid background characteristics of a situation. Thus, rows (c) and (d) should dominate columns (a) and (b) in resolving the conflicting feelings implied in cells (B) and (C) and it is easier to go across columns from (a) to (b) and back than down rows from (c) to (d) and back. That process should dominate outcome is a familiar story. Lind and Tyler (1988) have shown how feelings about procedural justice often dominate feelings about substantive justice received; Lane (1988) reports that in the conflict between How One is Treated Versus what One Gets, the former tends to dominate the latter in a variety of evaluations; Juster and Stafford (1985) have demonstrated the importance of process benefits in allocating time; and in attitudinal research attitudes towards the means often decide whether the end is worth striving for (Azjen 1988). The story I am telling is about processes; the effect of policy outcomes on feelings of well-being is a different story. There are at least two reasons for believing that, when markets or other social institutions fail, negative feelings dominate positive feelings: losses are more feared than gains are prized (Kahneman et al. 1982); and pains are more noticed and longer remembered than are pleasures (Moses- Zirkes 1993, 30). Thus, under circumstances regarded as unfavorable, column (b) should dominate column (a) and row (d) should dominate row (c), that is, undemocratic sentiments are more likely to invade complacency than vice versa and political negativity is more likely to infect political criticality than vice versa. The dominance of process over outcome and of negative over positive pushes people toward the southeast quadrant, political negativity. The positivity bias then yields to superior force. Do Democratic Processes Contribute to Happiness? At this stage in human affairs, some are suspicious that the market causes malaise while democracy, embodying the moral virtues of greater political equality, freedom, and participation, is the source of well-being. So far as one can tell, that is not so. In the first place, believing that one lives in a country with a good government has only the most trivial relationship to measured feelings of well-being (ranking 10th out of 12 such beliefs) -- even though about an eighth of the population believes that good government is one of the two most important sources of their satisfaction with their lives (Campbell et al. 1976, 84-85). And in the second place, in a study using 1980 data from 23 countries (after controlling for level of per capita income) the correlation between self- reported happiness and an index of democratic processes (a functioning parliamentary system, a functioning competitive party system, number of popular elections held in a recent time period, and influence of the military in the political system) was virtually zero, in fact slightly negative (-.02) (Veenhoven 1993, 50). So far as I know, this is the only report on the relation between democratic systems and average individual well-being, a crucial point for democratic theory -- but always assumed rather than investigated. When income is not controlled, the correlation is a substantial +.54 (Veenhoven 1993, 50), suggesting that the only reason why people in modern nations are happier than those in the LDC is because of the economic (Lane 1991), and not the political, differences among these countries. Why should a form of government for which people fight and suffer and die to establish have so little effect on people's happiness once established? One reason for the difference between revolutionary democrats and the citizens of established democracies is that no matter what the revolution is about, whether nationalist or communist or democratic, there is a post- revolutionary euphoria that lasts for several years and then decays. Thus, around 1957, following their respective revolutions, the Cubans, the Egyptians, and the Israelis all registered higher levels of satisfaction with their lives than did citizens of many of the richer, democratic countries (Cantril 1965) -- but casual evidence suggests that these feelings of well-being were transient. Perhaps, however, there is a current reason for democratic cheerlessness that is more relevant to our current malaise. Once established, democracy is rarely a source of meaning. From Durkheim's studies of suicide to modern theories of depression (Mirowski & Ross 1986), the sense that life and its various activities are meaningful has been regarded as necessary for life satisfaction and to ward off depression. For example, two studies have found that two of the few beliefs that best predicted happiness were: the belief that life has meaning, [and] that one's guiding values are right (Shaver and Freedman 1976; see also Zika and Chamberlain 1987)). Once established, democracy does little to provide meaning to life. As is the case with adaptation to changed levels of income, the processes of adaptation to political forms make change a source of pleasure or pain while maintenance of these forms has no such effect. The decline of challenges to democratic ideology deprives democracy of its inspirational meaning. Many have compared political ideologies, especially Marxism, to religious faith which has been generally, though not universally, found to be a source of meaning contributing to well-being (Diener 1984, 556; Ross 1990). Even the ideology of the Populists in the 1890s seemed to have some of the meaning of a crusade against evil (Galambos 1975, 91-92). Is it, then, the decline of ideology, so recently heralded and then abandoned, that makes democracy devoid of meaning? Perhaps, for ideologies often give hope for the future and hopelessness is, indeed, a major source of depression (Beck et al. 1975; Staats 1987)). While democracy has an ambivalent relationship to nationalism and national pride, the decline in commitment to democratic institutions shares something with the decline in commitment to the nation. Martin Seligman (in Buie 1988, 18), commenting on the erosion of this commitment to one's nation, said To the extent that it is now difficult for young people to take seriously . . .their relationship to their country, . . . meaning in life will be very difficult to find. The self, to put it another way, is a very poor site for meaning. In this interpretation, democracy functions to complement the individual; without a thriving belief in their nation and its political institutions, modern individuals fail to thrive. Democratic Government as Necessary Pain Certain aspects of democratic politics imply more pain and unhappiness than good cheer. Indeed, it may be said that democratic political systems are inherently painful, and perhaps, therefore, unlikable. The first reason for this pain and dislike is obvious enough: All painful social problems are, in the end, political problems. Facing these problems is increasingly painful. Asked in 1957 (Veroff et al. 1981, 57) what they think are the sources of their happiness and unhappiness, only 13 percent of a U.S. national sample said that community, national, and world problems were sources of unhappiness. By 1976 this proportion had almost doubled to 24 percent -- more than were made unhappy by their economic or occupational problems. There are several reasons for this unhappiness: (1) thinking about social problems may create internal conflicts (if only ambivalence) and external conflicts, that is, quarrels; (2) acknowledging the presence of these problems is painful because, as in the case of theodicy, to do so is to jeopardize some prized belief; similarly, (3) the implied or open conflict of values is painful because it hurts to find one's values challenged or scorned; and (4) it is the nature of social problems that their resolution will injure one side or another (see below). As Mannheim and Lasswell have both observed, politics is the place where ends conflict and, since conflicting ends do not lend themselves to ends-means rationality (Popper 1963), the irrational decisions in that domain are harder to justify to oneself and others. Such justification must come from the tacit agreement of others (Berger & Luckman 1963) but political conflict challenges that agreement. Democratic governments often seem to be, and sometimes are, in opposition to their citizens. This oppositional principle has several sources. When people conflict with one another the government may side with one of the conflicting parties. The other party (or parties) then finds itself in opposition to the government, that is, the government is the opponent. Or suppose that the government does nothing, then all parties to the contest are in opposition to the government. Is this different from the market, which T”nnies describes in Hobbesian terms as the war of all against all ? Yes. It is different in the sense that Adam Smith pointed out: in the market there is a hidden hand that ensures that all third parties benefit from economic competition. In contrast, in electoral competitions most of the population is a partisan rather than a third party. The protection of unpopular minorities and causes hurts some. The opposition between citizens and governments stems also from certain duties governments are asked to perform, duties that require as a condition of their fulfillment that some, perhaps most, of the public will be offended. In protecting the rights of, say, homosexuals, or, especially at an earlier stage in history, of African-Americans, governments incur the anger, irritation, or hostility of more people than are mollified, pleased, or benefitted. When businesses abuse their power governments increase their regulation of business, which, in turn, increases businessmen's hostility to government (Lane 1954). NIMBY lives here, too: certain things must be done, but not in my back yard. The opposition of citizens to their governments and of governments to their citizens is a condition of the very process of democratic government. Democratic Processes are Generally Disliked Politics is not regarded as fun. Reporting on pleasurable uses of time, Robinson and Converse (1972, 70) report: Stimulating least enthusiasm (falling well behind sports relaxing, one's car) were organizational memberships and following politics, pursuits which have little visibility in time-budget diaries. A little later Robinson (1977 in Argyle 1993, 67) gathered other data on the uses of time giving satisfaction; he listed 18 activities or objects by the frequency with which time spent on them gave great satisfaction; your children came first (79%), being with relatives was near the middle (27%); shopping was near the bottom (17%), and politics was dead last (9%). The citizen role is not a happy role. In extended interviews, Lane (1965) asked a group of working class men what it meant to be a good citizen and a good patriot. Being a good patriot was easy: one had only to be loyal and ready to fight for one's country. Being a good citizen, however, was difficult, partly because it had such ambiguous and extensive boundaries: being a good parent and spouse, financially responsible, a good community member, paying taxes, loyalty to one's government, and, of course, voting in elections. All knew they were good patriots, but few thought they were especially good citizens. The citizen role is fraught with ill-defined moral demands: guilt, anxiety, and uncertainty. Role ambiguity is a known source of unhappiness (Michalos 1985, 60); there is no happiness in the ambiguous citizen role. The high level of cognitive and moral demands democracy makes on its citizens has been widely noted (e.g., Kaminski 1991a, 1991b) -- as have the simplistic responses to these demands, not least in Converse's theory of non-attitudes prevalent in political thinking (Converse 1964). One would not have thought this distinction between level of demand and own level of response would make much difference to busy citizens, but Lane's interviews with Eastport's working class men did reveal something of this strain. There is another kind of strain, however, with a different thrust. Preferences programmed by evolution are not democratic. In general, it seems that evolutionary instruction prepares us for three anti-democratic preferences: a preference for hierarchy, as among all nonhuman primates -- which nevertheless may allow for pressure on and manipulation of the male alpha by members of a troop (de Waal 1993), preference for the familiar and similar, that is, for ethnocentrism over cosmopolitanism (at least among the same species), and preference for male dominance rather than gender equality. It is a cultural and ethical achievement to overcome these tropisms prompted by our genes. But it may be that there is a hedonic toll for each such ethical and even prudential triumph over genetic instructions. The subject role is painful. We are tax-paying, regulated, benefit- receiving subjects as well as (sometimes) active, participative citizens. We deal with government bureaucracies in many aspects of our lives. As the world becomes more complex our bureaucratic encounters multiply. As it turns out, the public's personal experiences with non-regulative government bureaucracies (health, welfare, pensions, etc.) is actually found to be rather benign: there were usually agents available to handle a person's inquiry or complaint, these agents took personal responsibility for the case presented and pursued the matter to a conclusion, the agents were usually courteous and informed, and so forth. But do these favorable bureaucratic encounters change people's attitudes toward government bureaucracy ? No. The default values of the familiar schemas of bureaucracy prevail: ideology triumphs over experience (Katz et al. 1975). But, of course, any dealing with bureaucracy, public or private, is in a literal and metaphoric sense, a pain. We are all made anxious by bureaucratic forms and most of us by our dealings with authority. Exercising rights does not lead to positive feelings toward government. In many cases we are merely claiming rights, something owed to us by government either because of statutes giving entitlements or because of a constitutional provision. Two considerations modify the benefits of rights. First, when the beneficiaries are socially denigrated, as in the case of welfare, many people do not apply and for those that do: the stance these recipients adopt is not that of a rights-bearing citizen claiming benefits to which he is entitled but that of a suppliant seeking in the words of a number of recipients, a little help to tide us over until we can get back on our own feet again (Briar 1966, 53). The second thing that happens in the case of rights is that because they are rights to which people are entitled, their benefits are not credited to government if the rights are protected or granted but the government is blamed if the benefits are not promptly forthcoming. The crowning glory of democratic government, the protection of rights, is a perverse source of blame, of political negativity, and of pain. Finally, in this abbreviated account of the pains of democratic processes I want to turn to questions of the frustration of the desire to control one's environment. Democratic processes yield little pleasure in controlling events in one's life. What I have in mind here is the apparently cross-species desire to see the environment (people, things, events) respond when one acts, a condition for sense of control. In politics, the evidence for personal control is minimal, a source of unhappiness. Has this pleasure in controlling events an evolutionary or genetic basis? Seligman (1975, 98) reports: When rats and pigeons are given a choice between getting free food and getting the same food for making responses, they choose to work. . . . Infants smile at a mobile whose movements are contingent on their responses, but not a noncontingent mobile. There is, says Seligman, an inherent sense of satisfaction in the generalized sense of effectance [effective control]. Psychological studies concur: people are so eager to believe that they control their own environments that they see such control in their choosing a lottery ticket, rather than accepting one from a machine; they believe that their cheering a football team influences the team's performance (Langer 1983), and they believe that their actions, in any situation where they act, are the causes of the outcomes regardless of other more powerful forces at work (Gilbert et al. 1987). As the advocates of rational choice and the believers in the logic of collective action never tire of telling us, politics severs the relation between act and reward. In learning theory language, the learning -- and pleasure -- that follows from contingency reinforcement (rewards coupled with acts designed to produce rewards or avoid punishments) are denied political participants, unless they believe that it is their votes that produced a victory (which the illusion of control [Langer] might actually encourage). Under these circumstances, the (modest) decline in both internal political efficacy and (more substantial) decline external political efficacy noted above must be a source, or an expression, of political negativity and, if politics is important to an individual, of pain and even of mild unhappiness. Since there is an efficacy-participation relationship throughout the world (Kinder & Sears 1985, 702) one could trace some small portion of the distrust, malaise, and dysphoria, if not actual depression, that characterizes so many of the market democracies in the 1980s and 1990s to increased perception of popular political ineffectiveness. In that case, too, democracy does not make people happy. IV. THE JOYLESS POLITY AND CITIZEN COMPETENCE Batson and associates (1992, 299, 300) say the function of moods is to inform the organism about likely pleasure or pain to be obtained from interaction with the physical and social environment. Moods, then, encourage or discourage participation. A negative mood continued these authors, is likely to discourage action by leading one to believe the action will bring no good. This chimes with characterizations of depression: depressed college students are generally less active than the nondepressed (Sheslow & Erickson 1985); depression reduces the capacity to work effectively on a given task and to carry out one's purposes, e.g., to do well in school (Feshbach & Feshbach 1987); and, although depressives have higher altruistic ideals than the nondepressed, they do not behave more altruistically (Morris & Kanfer 1983). For democratic theory it is especially useful to consider the problems of autonomous behavior by the depressed: One frequently observed theme among persons who manifest clinical depression is their seeming inability to behave autonomously, to assert themselves (Miya 1976, 260). If, as the Eastport respondents asserted, good citizenship includes responsible behavior, one should note that the depressed are not responsible members of their communities in several respects: concealed in the frequent association of depression and drug or alcohol abuse is a causal relationship: depression is more often a cause than a consequence of these pathologies (Cummings et al. 1985). This same enlarged view of the citizen role included responsible work behavior; depressives have more disability days absent from work than non-depressives (Broadhead et al. 1990). Finally, if the good citizen is the good parent, note that the depressed parent is more likely to have a depressed child, quite apart from the biogenic influences (Weissman et al. 1988), and the child of the depressed suffers more fractures, burns and other accidents in the home than the child of a nondepressed parent (Brown & Harris 1978). Decision making is impaired by sadness and depression. College students in a sad, as compared to a happy or neutral mood, are less able to solve resource dilemmas. One reason is the poorer ability of the sad students to delay gratification (Knapp & Clark 1991). Dysphoria due to situational stress also impaired judgement in a complex task, and, the authors find, it was the dysphoria and not the presence of external stress that caused this impairment (Gillis 1993). On the other hand, depressed subjects make more accurate estimates of the effects of their own actions on events because, with their sense of helplessness, they are less infected by the illusion of control (V squez 1987). Happiness has opposite effects. Good feelings seem capable of bringing out our better nature socially and our creativity in thinking and problem- solving (Isen 1988, 6-7). . . .They are potential sources of interpersonal cooperativeness and personal health and growth.. . .[P]ositive emotions facilitate helpfulness and generosity. And, in contrast to the poorer decision making of the depressed, happiness appear[s] to improve such cognitive processes as judgment, problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity. Other studies show that positive mood leads to increased helpfulness toward others, partly because happy persons want others to share their happiness (just as miser y likes company ) and partly because of their desire to maintain their happy mood by avoiding guilt (Carlson et al. 1988). Increased happiness seems actually to cause greater ethnic tolerance (Kendall 1954, 87) and students in a happy mood, compared to depressed students, are more likely to support egalitarian justice principles (Sinclair 1991). Arguments to the effect that happiness leads to political quiescence (which could include conventional voting patterns) seem not to be supported. At least there is no necessary relation between discontent and protest behavior (Klandermans 1989, 74). Moreover, given the strong relation between happiness and sense of control (internal efficacy), happiness or satisfaction with one's life might be associated with greater as well as lesser protest behavior. Thus, citizen competence, as well as support for many humane principles, is a function of mood; it is eroded by sadness, depression, dysphoria of all kinds. But apparently democracy contributes little if anything to good moods and is often the source of hurt feelings and disappointments while its processes are often painful and frustrating. In modern democracies, major depression thrives and expands, especially among the young. The Relief of Pain in Democratic Processes In this penultimate section I want to make three points. The first is that happiness or subjective well-being is not the only final good; human development and justice share that status. We cannot, therefore, assess democracy solely on the basis of some net balance of pain and pleasure. A utilitarian account of democratic processes is but a part of the picture that part we have been sketching here. Second, the pains of democratic processes are mostly inherent in democracy: pains of internal distress and external conflict arising when fundamental social values are referred to democratic governments; pains incurred when one finds one's government is an opponent; pains experiences when when governments protect unpopular causes and enforce the rights of people one loathes; and, finally, the moderate, unconscious distress occasioned when democracies enforce ethical codes running counter to our inherited biograms. The experience of citizen pain, however, is necessary for democracies to perform their functions. As cybernetic systems they rely on the information of those who claim that they are injured, discriminated against, underprotected or otherwise hurt -- even if citizens do not know why they hurt. In the beginning it was specified that citizens might petition for the redress of grievances. Their feedback systems are such that the pains they inflict on some members are often the costs of promoting some larger good which may, but need not, also benefit the pained persons. By universalizing some particularistic consideration the pained persons benefit by living under a rule of law whose application then may help them under other circumstances. Nevertheless, the pains of the democratic process undermine its other benefits. When the means of redress or voice are unpleasant, people fail to implement these means. One of the main reasons why there often is a hiatus between attitudes and behavior is that unless the behavior is itself approved people do not pursue the goals implied by their attitudes (Ajzen 1988). The consequence is that policy is distorted in favor of those who find the democratic processes less painful or those who tolerate the pain in the expectation that their participation will bear fruit in policy. And these are considerations quite irrelevant to needs, considerations that systematically discriminate against those with greater grievances. Under these circumstances, the cybernetic system partially fails of its purpose. Depression, Political Negativity, and Democratic Pains Three states of mind and feeling have been discussed: (1) clinical depression (and its opposite, happiness or good cheer); (2) general negativity and its focused form of political negativity, and (3) the pains or topical unhappiness aroused by democratic processes. We seek to understand their causes, their symptoms, and how they relate to each other. Although much of the relevant knowledge is missing, we may start with a set of propositions of research based (RB) and hypothetical (H) relations among the three states of mind and feeling mentioned. Depression is the broadest category, involving the entire personality and implying, among other things, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Negativity, often but not always associated with depression, is also a general approach to life but here our interest is in its political expression, political negativity. Two relations between depression and political negativity appear probable: 1. Political negativity (but not criticality) is a symptom of depression (RB+H in that general negativity is one of several defining symptoms of depression, shares with depression the symptoms of helplessness and hopelessness, and has, with one exception, a higher incidence in the groups most vulnerable to depression). 2. Depression and its related forms of dysphoria are also probably one of the causes of political negativity (H). That is, when the tide of depression rises (as it did in the 1960s and thereafter), we may expect political negativity also to increase. But, because the relations are weak, political negativity is also independent of depression and has a life of its own. A third proposition stemming from our analysis of political negativity as aversive (hurtful to the holder) also seems warranted: 3. Because political negativity is aversive it is also a minor cause of unhappiness (RB), but not of depression (H). Finally, the sense of pain inflicted by democratic processes are reciprocally related to political negativity: 4. Experiencing democratic practices as painful is probably a cause of political negativity (RB+H), and: 5.Political negativity will sensitize and exacerbate the experience of pain flowing from democratic processes (H). Social and Political Causes of Three Infelicitous Thoughts and Feelings Two external or social causes of these unhappy thoughts and feelings have been mentioned, a very broad, society-wide weakening of human ties, and, because of the particular focus of this paper on politics, the much narrower stimuli comprising democratic processes. The starting point of this paper was on the effect of weakened social ties on depression and its opposite, happiness: 6. Weakened social ties tend to cause depression and strong social ties tend to cause happiness (RB). Because negativity in general and political negativity in particular are associated with depression, it seems probable that whatever causes depression also causes negativity, though, because of multiple causation for each of these moods, the following hypothesis is less certain: 7.Weakened social ties cause a general negativity of which political negativity is a part (H). According to our evidence, the timing of the rise of negativity coincides with the observed increased weakening of social ties (the 1960s and early 1970s), but we do not have good evidence on the causal relations hypothesized. But the pains associated with democratic processes are different: if democratic government is to perform its functions, it will inflict many of the pains discussed. Thus: 8. Democratic processes are a cause of pain and unhappiness (RB in that (i) they are disliked, (ii) said to be a source of unhappiness, and (iii) cross-culturally slightly negatively related to happiness); I doubt if they are in any way causes of depression (H). But might it be that strong social ties could alter these processes themselves and therefore the pains they inflict? Let us sort this question into two parts: the effects of social ties on the reception of the pains of the democratic process, and the effect of social ties in changing democratic processes. The first part is easier to answer: 9. Weakened social ties make citizens more vulnerable to the pains of democratic processes (H) in part because weakly connected people are more vulnerable to all kinds of stress. 10. The second part of the question, the effect of social ties on democratic processes, is much more complicated and leads into complex questions of general communitarian solutions to our social ills; devolution of power to smaller, local groups; and the collectivization of participation to make it less individualistic and more of a group and interactive process. For reasons I cannot develop here, I am skeptical of these solutions, for they assume motives and purposes that are currently missing from our society. In closing, I would like to address these purposes. Pain in Market Democracies is a Function of the Economistic Fallacy The social change that is required both to ameliorate the joylessness of politics and to remove a principal cause of depression is a better understanding of the sources of happiness. Beyond the poverty level, more income contributes little to happiness and protects people against depression only moderately well. To hold otherwise in the face of the evidence is to practice the economistic fallacy (Lane 1991, 524-547). In contrast, at all levels of income, good friends, the respect of one's neighbors and co-workers, or even the availability of a single supportive confidant on whom one can rely all contribute a great deal to happiness and are specific protections against depression. The depreciation of economic goods and emphasis on human ties is not the simple assertion of preference for one good in contrast to another but a tested ends-means proposition: If the goal is happiness or the prevention of depression, then the most effective means to that end are good relations with people not the possession of more money or goods (Lane 1991; Brown and Harris 1978). Of course, this general proposition is not true for everyone and there are other routes to happiness (Lane 1995), but in advanced market democracies the proposition holds for most people most of the time. The market sources of friendlessness and social disconnectedness in contemporary advanced market democracies infect the political processes we are examining. The polity reflects the market's emphasis on economic welfare, with, except for the poor, the same negligible effects on good cheer. If the market's claim to maximize utility is mocked by the rising tide of depression in market economies, democracy's claim to facilitate the pursuit of happiness also fares poorly. Would any other political system do better? Are we talking about the human condition rather than about political systems? This human condition has changed in one important respect: people have fewer friends and weaker social integration than they had as recently as the 1950s. On these matters, democracies are either silent or act perversely to favor economic welfare at the sacrifice of the human companionship that promotes genuine well-being.