Politics involves much more than the calculations of rational choice theory.

European social democracy is – and not for the first time in its history – in severe crisis. The European elections of 2009 produced dismal results for almost all major social-democratic parties, and these results are electoral indicators of the size of the crisis. Without doubt it is widespread and acute.

But there is general confusion as to how this crisis came about, and how to distinguish between its national and international elements. There are obviously country-specific problems, but these do not explain the broader trend. So how can we get a grip on the pan-European problems of social democracy?

The problem starts at the very beginning of the analysis, in the way in which the question is posed. The crucial question to ask is not why social democrats lose elections, but why citizens should vote for them. Turning the question the other way round makes a big difference: it asks for a positive case to be made for social democracy, rather than narrowing the analysis down to the examination of poor election results.

If you ask for reasons for failure you start from the status quo, and tend to look at narrow explanations for your misfortunes. If you make a positive case for social democracy you start from the fundamentals and work your way backwards. The question then is not why so many social-democratic marriages have been broken, but why one should ‘fall in love’ with social democracy in the first place.

A narrow analytical focus on electoral performance is nothing new. It was a particular feature of the 1990s and early 2000s that social democrats shifted their interest from developing political alternatives to building electoral coalitions (big tents). Political scientists describe this as a shift in strategy from ‘policy-seeking’ to ‘vote-seeking’.

The new vote-seeking strategy was underpinned by policies designed to appeal to certain key voter groups – middle England, the new centre, or whatever you would like to call them. This strategy was based on a fundamental flaw however: the belief in rational voters who cast their vote according to their personal interest.

Just as in economics, the myth of rational choice as the guiding principle of behaviour is widespread in the political realm. Few people – especially in Europe – seem prepared to challenge the false assumption that voters are simply maximising their self interest when they go to the ballot box. This leads to misguided political strategies.

There are people who offer a different view however. Five years ago, for example, the Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff asked why it was that George W. Bush won against John Kerry, even though Kerry’s policies were clearly in the personal interest of many more Americans than those of Bush. Why did people vote against their own interests?

The first important insight is that rationality is not always self-evident, and that it operates in combination with emotions. We do not make decisions with a calculator, but above all through our feelings about things. This is how our brains work. So phrases such as ‘good policy is what works’ make no sense, as they really do not tell us anything. What works is not self-evident.

Second, if there is no such thing as a rational voter how do people make their decisions? Answer: they vote based on identity and empathy. And if you think about this it makes a lot of sense. Consider the economic crisis. People are prepared to vote against their economic interest (as has happened recently in many elections where social democrats have lost) as long as they can identify with a person, a party and its policies, and as long as the politics is trustworthy and believable. People still do not like all the bad news, but they trust in a particular person or party to do their best to prevent things getting worse; other candidates, on the other hand, might not be trusted to deliver on the good things they have promised.

This is the reason why trustworthiness, authenticity and programmatic identity are so important. And in this department social democrats throughout Europe have lost out dramatically in recent years. Political identity and trust are gone. These aspects in particular need to be addressed if social democrats throughout Europe are serious about changing their electoral misfortunes.