Turning again to their wonderful data, Messrs Frey and Stutzer answer this question as well.

ECONOMIST: Happiness is a warm vote

So, for example, Frey and Stutzer have argued that the Swiss get a lot of procedural utility out of their relatively direct democratic institutions, which is independent of the results produced by those institutions.

FORBES: Happiness, Freedom, and Autonomy

Messrs Frey and Stutzer find that a one-point increase in this democracy index, after stripping out the effects of the other variables, increases the share of people who say they are very happy by 2.7 percentage points.

ECONOMIST: Happiness is a warm vote