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practicable and analytically relevant for the foreign policy analysis of largedeveloping countries?Governing parties are pivotal actors in determining policies that state officials willimplement for the duration of the former’s tenure in government. However, foreignpolicy appears to be an area of still marginal significance to the electoral fortunes ofpolitical parties in developing countries. This may mean that stances oninternational issues are comparatively under-developed in party manifestoes, andthat they generally feature low on the priority lists of political parties contending forpower. Or it could indicate that state bureaucracies, such as External Affairsministries, have a high degree of autonomy in deciding the broad contours offoreign policy, and that continuity would prevail over radical change. It could pointto newer democracies allowing greater freedom for governing parties to definethreats and mobilise national resources to avoid them or challenge them.The extent to which governing parties, progressive or otherwise, are able toinfluence foreign policy perceptions and outcomes depends to a considerable extenton the pre-existing institutional make-up they encounter upon entering power, andhow they are able to manipulate these institutional structures to their own ends.Governing parties are, of course, not monolithic. They are, as with any othercollectivity of human beings, populated by a variety of interests, norms, values andresponsibilities. Nonetheless, they enter government on a series of platforms,elaborated during elections, sometimes explicitly related to foreign policy. Theextent to which these are implemented, or to which they change existing policy, isan important measure of their influence on foreign policy outcomes. Intra-partydynamics, such as the extent of democracy within the party, and the role of politicalleadership, are also central to the eventual influence of political parties on foreignpolicy formulation. Part II (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) will analyse the extent to whichruling party preferences (conceptualised as ‘internationalist’ postures) in SouthAfrica under Mbeki and in Brazil under Lula, have been translated into nationalforeign policy goals and outcomes.The aim of this chapter is to elucidate the means whereby the two governing partiesruling the countries under examination in this thesis, the ANC of South Africa, and106