“I can now confidentially conclude,” says Christopher Ojeda, that “politics is depressing, and depression is demobilising.”
To support this claim Ojeda, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, draws on decades of data, principally but not exclusively drawn from the United States. Indeed his new book, The Sad Citizen, includes a long appendix detailing the strengths and limits of various data sets to test the case.
The ambition is impressive: Ojeda offers a synthesis of psychology, sociology and political science to explore the depression and alienation now so common in Donald Trump’s America and beyond. Here, mental health meets the ballot box.
Politics is often about emotion, and Ojeda brings both originality and detailed experimental results to his study. The Sad Citizen opens with the widest possible question: what evokes any emotion in humans? Ojeda replies with the “stress-appraisal-coping framework”: a change in our setting requires a response and, possibly, a change in our behaviour. In the political realm, the stresses are numerous. Many, suggests Ojeda, provoke disappointment, sadness, melancholy and, ultimately, depression. People who are depressed will disengage, taking them out of the political process and weakening democracy.
Why is politics so potent? Because, argues Ojeda, so many possible losses await anyone who engages. Your preferred candidate loses an election, you face an unwelcome government decision, you find it impossible to enact political change. Citizens have little control over political outcomes, and limited ability to overturn a disappointment. As a result, “politics is depressing when it creates losers who think the outcome is irrevocable.” Those who lose then avoid further engagement.
All this leaves politics to those motivated by anger, anxiety and fear. A growing number of disenfranchised citizens, invisible by choice, put at risk any society keen to balance power, rights and resources.
The Sad Citizen details the nature of political loss, and therefore depression. The data highlights the many and varied ways politics can leave us dejected, with case studies on electoral outcomes and some recent issues to drive home the point. Disenchantment can be reinforced by political tactics based on denigrating opponents and the endless negativity of social media. Ojeda speculates too on the contribution of a rise in partisanship and culture clashes over identity. Democracy is not good for your equanimity — a finding reinforced by interviews with American mental health professionals.
Political disillusionment can begin a spiral: distressed citizens, difficulties mobilising around issues, falling political participation, a narrowing of voice and engagement.
What is to be done? Ojeda talks early in the book about understanding the causes of depression so we can “better design democratic institutions.” Sadly, though, he closes with few firm policy recommendations beyond a preference for election campaigns that focus on policy ambition rather than negativity.
Politics will always be contentious, and losers numerous. Imagining democracy without depression, says Ojeda, may be “a hopeless project, doomed from the start.” Still, he suggests, depression is not all bad. It can encourage us to reflect on our disappointment and re-engage. Our aim should be to keep people involved, to discourage withdrawal from political life.
The positive tone in the final paragraphs is less than convincing given how the previous 150 pages have detailed, with careful methodology and impressive data, all the evidence that politically induced depression is ubiquitous.
Perhaps a future volume might explore changes in the political system to make depression less prevalent and less harmful. Can more direct democracy and local activity make a difference? Perhaps sortition or citizen juries would change attitudes. Maybe those people who protest regularly are best protected against disillusionment, since they maintain their faith that change is possible.
And what of institutional arrangements such as compulsory voting? Though little discussed in America, compulsory voting could be relevant in two ways. It gives politicians a strong incentive to be inclusive and seek outcomes that embrace the widest possible constituency, therefore tackling some of the alienation and disappointment driving political depression. Compulsory voting also makes withdrawal more difficult. Yes, a citizen can leave their ballot paper blank or spoilt, yet more than 98 per cent of Australian citizens enrol to vote, and in May this year 90 per cent of them cast a ballot (with just 5.5 per cent voting informally, intentionally or otherwise). Perhaps political depression and withdrawal are not inevitable.
Christopher Ojeda has written an impressive and rigorous study, using data to confirm empathically a widespread intuition: that people in many Western democracies are sad citizens. Sobering, important — and, it’s to be hoped, an invitation to a new conversation about restoring hope through participation. •
The Sad Citizen: How Politics is Depressing and Why It Matters
By Christopher Ojeda | University of Chicago Press | $36.99 | 240 pages
