Dorn, D., Fischer, J. A., Kirchgässner, G., &Sousa-Poza, A. (2007). Is it culture or democracy? The impact of democracy and culture on happiness. Social Indicators Research, 82(3), 505-526.
We analyze the relation between democracy and perceived subjective well-being while controlling for other relevant determinants such as culture measured by languages. We conduct a cross-national analysis covering 28 countries using data from the 1998 International Social Survey Programme. Contrasting existing empirical evidence, we observe a significant positive relationship between democracy and happiness even when controlling for income and culture measured by language and religion. ...