Another strategy for assessing causality in the relationship between participation and happiness might take advantage of exogenous shocks to participation to see if people are happier before or after a sudden change in their opportunities for or levels of participation. In the empirical section below, we use this strategy to examine difference in the attitudes of young people who were not old enough to vote during the previous president election in their countries from other young people who were first able to exercise the right to vote in the preceding election. And in one case, we use survey data on the reasons people did not turn out to vote to identify individuals who did not vote because of some external constraint and then compare their reported life satisfaction with that of their counterparts who both wanted to and actually were able to cast their ballots.