Speculative theory of political participation and happiness

A speculative theory: Current politics is making people increasingly miserable because at a participatory level it has become for many people, on the margin, a more national, more electoral, and more passive activity. All three of these trends are bad for your political happiness return-on-investment. The first dimension above is scope. All else equal, people get more satisfaction engaging in local politics, where they have more investment in the community, have personal relationships with other participants, and can see more tangible results. This is particularly true of hyper-local politics—PTA meetings, youth sports organizations, neighborhood associations, etc—where many people don’t even think of what they are doing as politics. The second dimension is instrumentality. All else equal, people are happier participating in legislative policy-making and executive governance than in the instrumental prerequisites to get to those aspects of politics, namely campaigns and elections of…