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The neoclassical realist framework sets aside a place for the analysis of perceptionand the competition among ideas in the domestic politics of foreign policymaking.This renders the latter highly amenable to subjectivity and the agential power ofindividuals and groups, such as ruling parties, in the governing apparatus of a givenstate. In this way, the constraints and opportunities presented by the internationalsystem – the distribution of capabilities, the offense-defense balance, and thebalance of regional and global power – are mediated by the nature of state-societyrelations domestically. This means that emerging powers’ capacity for emergence ismediated simultaneously by domestic imperatives and international considerations,and that their internationalism, or greater activism, paradoxically, should not be seenas an unequivocal indicator of state strength.Ruling parties depend upon institutional freedom and legitimating power to givemeaning and allocate resources to their interpretations of external threat, or shifts inthe balance of power, globally or regionally. Their choices of pacific foreign policiesmay have as much to do with the constraints they face domestically, as with theirown proclivities toward internationalism, and concerns with justice in foreignpolicy.Thus, where ruling parties enjoy great degrees of institutional freedom andlegitimating power, the state will approximate neoclassical realism’s unitary actormodel, and decisions to engage in expansive foreign policy will be frequent. Levelsof internationalism will be low. Conversely, where ruling parties enjoy lesserinstitutional freedom and face challenges in justifying their foreign policy goals,engagement on international issues will not be as frequent, nor as intense in termsof resource allocation. The latter scenario would prevail as governing parties seek toavert the costs of domestic opposition to a foreign policy decision or posture.Neoclassical realism holds many advantages for a study of this nature, among them,elevating the state once more as the locus of foreign policy analysis, as opposed tothe faceless forces of globalisation that gained currency in recent decades; bringinginto focus the dual contexts in which statesmen act, along with the roles ofperception and individual leadership, all of which are central to the foreign policy102