Broadly, the three main ideologies influencing major political parties in the most powerful democracies are conservatism, liberalism and socialism.
In my view, nationalist ideas held by both voters and politicians are the main reason why policy making by democratic governments is not optimal for maximising welfare.
Nationalism not only blocks policies that benefit foreign countries at the cost of the native country, but also sometimes blocks policies which benefit both foreign countries and the native country, because of objections to foreign countries enjoying greater benefits than the native country.
EA’s commitment to impartiality makes it internationalist. Internationalist reasoning lies behind many of the problems that EAs want governments to prioritise, and the solutions EAs want governments to choose, from tackling existential risks from AI via intergovernmental organisations, to strengthening intergovernmental infrastructure to tackle existential risks from engineered pandemics, to increasing funding for international development and global health.
Liberalism and socialism have influential internationalist traditions within them, which mean that even with a nationalist electorate, governments are sometimes able to implement internationalist policies, such as increasing budgets for international development, or strengthening intergovernmental organisations to tackle global catastrophic risks.
However, internationalist strains of thought are currently far less influential within conservatism.
In practice, electoral systems mean that a lot of governments swing between implementing social-liberal policies and implementing liberal-conservative policies.
Crudely, about half the time, conservatives are in power. To help promote internationalist policy, which is vital to tackle global catastrophic risk and extreme poverty, we need to promote and strengthen existing internationalist schools of thought within conservatism, or even create new internationalist schools of thought within conservatism.
Internationalist conservatism could comprise a mix of views such as authoritarian views on crime and drug regulation, favouring low immigration, placing importance on religion and on conserving traditions, but still believing in working with and helping other countries, and supporting intergovernmental organisations.
Internationalist variants of conservatism could be promoted by conservatives within the EA/LW/Emergent Ventures blogosphere, or via new think tanks and organisations.
"Internationalist conservatism could comprise a mix of views such as authoritarian views on crime and drug regulation, favouring low immigration, placing importance on religion and on conserving traditions, but still believing in working with and helping other countries, and supporting intergovernmental organisations."
Being myself quite conservative, I entirely agree. In particular "favouring low immigration", imply an expansionist developmental agenda, at least for your neighbouring countries! Nothing is more important for Spain than: stability, development and support with migration restrictions by Morocco and Algeria. If you are for a Big Wall in Mexico, you shall support NAFTA too!!.
Unoftunately, politics is not about policy.