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PT of Brazil, respectively, exert influence on foreign policy. Neoclassical realismhighlights the role of unit-level factors, including state structure, which is heretranslated into the relationship between governing parties, the legislature and theexecutive in the formulation of foreign policy. In keeping with the path highlightedby the previous chapter, this chapter seeks to provide some empirical weight toneoclassical realism’s focus on the state structure as a variable between systemicprocesses and foreign policy outcomes.Governing parties form a link between the executive and its foreign policymakingduties on one hand, and domestic constituencies on the other. Domestically, Leftistparties undergoing structural change often involving shifts to the right on economicquestions, along with increasing marginalisation of ‘radical’ voices during politicalhorse-trading, require the means to placate their populist and progressiveconstituencies. These means include material and ideational resources. Materialresources are supplied by the cultivation of followership in potential economicmarkets with new trading partners; while ideational resources are supplied by thecultivation of solidarity with the former ‘Third World’, and activism on specificissues currently framed in a ‘North-South’ language, such as the Palestine question,and international trade negotiations. This claim supposes that governing politicalparties alone are responsible for foreign policymaking. The reality, as will be madeclear in the sections to follow, is that governing parties make foreign policydecisions that must be implemented by foreign policy bureaucracies often of longstanding and substantial traditional autonomy, though this may vary from case tocase. The bargains entered into have important implications for foreign policy andthe relationship between the governing party and its constituents.By all accounts, similar sentiments of triumph greeted the impending accession ofANC and PT to political power in South Africa and Brazil, respectively. Both areparties historically identified with the struggle for democracy in their respectivepolities. 203 And both parties have been closely associated with workers’ movements:the ANC with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), with whichit is currently in a governing alliance; and PT with the Central Única dos Trabalhadores203 More detailed accounts of each case will be provided in Chapters 5 and 6,respectively.107