Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Here's a good one. Yet another survey says that Spaniards are the EU citizens most likely to participate in demonstrations, with 17.8% claiming to have been in a demo during the past year, compared to 5.7% in Europe as a whole. However, after the Portuguese, they are the Europeans least interested in politics, with 35.7% saying they have no interest at all in the subject. Nearly 50% of Spaniards say they "have difficulty forming political opinions." Spaniards are pretty happy with life, though, since they rated "life in general" at 7.4 on a scale of 10.

I wonder whether individual happiness with life and lack of interest in politics are correlated. Might be; if you spend a lot of your attention, time, and thought worrying about politics, that probably detracts from the attention you can give to your family and friends and everyday life. I will guarantee you, though, that there's a hell of a strong correlation between lack of societal interest in politics and poor quality of government. Only 7% of Danes and Norwegians say they're not interested in politics at all.

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