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Chapter 4: State Structure, Governing Parties and ForeignPolicymaking for Emerging Powers: The cases of SouthAfrica and BrazilIntroductionBy the middle of the last decade, governments of varying hue of leftist ideologywere in charge of a growing collection of states worldwide. This trend was no moreevident than in Latin America, where, by the time Fernando Lugo became presidentof Paraguay in August 2008, nearly every state on the continent was under Leftistleadership. The Cold War provided a framework in which the potential ascent topower of movements and political parties of the Left was constructed as a threat tothe values of the free world, represented by the US and its allies. The threat wasbased on the assumption that governments of the Left were sponsored by theUSSR, and subject to Communist infiltration. This threat was frequently met byintervention, and other attempts to undermine Leftist movements andgovernments. For other states not as firmly ensconced in the North Atlanticalliance, however, government of the Left represented progressivism, internationalsolidarity, and the prospect of state-supported development. Quite apart from theCold War connotations of Leftist government, ideologically leftist administrations inthe United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and even the United States, have createdscholarly and popular expectations of foreign policy guided by ‘progressivism’ andinternationalism. These expectations are based on assumptions that Leftistgoverning parties can automatically translate their progressivism into a ‘force forgood’ internationally, and that conservative governments are more subject to thedictates of Realpolitik than doctrine, 202 but these assumptions are open to question.The key contribution of the neoclassical realist approach to foreign policy, asillustrated in Chapter 3, is that it accepts the causal primacy of systemic factors inaffecting foreign policy, while making conceptual room for the influence ofdomestic dynamics, such as state-society relations, perceptions, ideas andpersonality, on the capacity of states to respond to challenges and opportunitiesstemming from their external environment. How can this assertion be made more202 Paterson, “Political parties and foreign policy”, 230.105