Thing about surveys, they can be interpreted in lots of directions.

Including one released last week ranking 157 countries of the world on the basis of “happiness.”

Denmark is No. 1, sad Burundi of Africa is last.

The Reuters story, linked above, seemed keen to fixate on the United States ranking 13th — which actually seems pretty good, considering how badly things are going there, at least according to politicians.

I find it interesting on another level: How well democracies did in the survey.

Let’s look at the 20 countries ranked as the happiest.

1. Denmark; 2. Switzerland; 3. Iceland; 4. Norway; 5. Finland; 6. Canada; 7. Netherlands; 8. New Zealand; 9. Australia; 10. Sweden.

11. Israel; 12. Austria; 13. United States; 14. Costa Rica; 15. Puerto Rico; 16. Germany; 17. Brazil; 18. Belgium; 19. Ireland; 20. Luxembourg.

What can we take from that? That the Scandivanians are pretty contented, despite all those months of lots of cold and very little sun.

But I find this more interesting:

Every one of the top 20 is a democracy. Not one authoritarian government in there.

Actually, the top 21 in the survey, when we add in No. 21 Mexico, all have democratic forms of government.

This comes at a time when people like Vladimir Putin, the latest Czar of all the Russias is eager to suggest democracy is a failed idea. And the Chinese government likes to send out tweets about how “Hitler and Mussolini came to power via elections.”

And where are those two, in the rankings?

Russia is 56 and China is 83. Apparently, not all the government propaganda in the world can get them ahead of the United Kingdom, Chile, Panama, Argentina and the Czech Republic, who rank 23 through 27.

The highest placing by an authoritarian government is Singapore, at 22.

Second-highest non-democratic country? The UAE, a monarchy, at 28.

France, where we live now, is 32.

Is it an accident that democracies crowd the top of the standings?

I think not.

The criteria the operators of the survey use include per capita gross domestic product (GDP), healthy years of life expectancy, “having someone to count on in times of trouble” and freedom from corruption in government and business.

In democracies the corrupt are eventually found out and the electorate throws the bums out.

In the ragged depths of the world rankings are dozens if countries where people have very little choice in what goes on around them.

The bottom 10 are Burundi, Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar. Don’t look for meaningful elections there.

To see the whole of the list, and find out the survey’s methodology, visit the World Happiness Report homepage and download the 2016 update. The rankings begin on page 20.