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at the unit-level, where the state holds varying degrees of agential power (or statepower).Although it could account for the results of change (whether more or less systemicstability, depending on systemic polarity), accounting for change in power structuresand distributions of power in international politics was a difficult task forneorealism, predicated as it is on a foundational claim of continuity, or at least,repetition, in international affairs. Neoclassical realism has provided answers on theconditions of states’ emergence as powers, as well as their potential trajectories, byopening the ‘black box’ of the state, and examining the factors conditioning statepower both domestically and abroad.By showing how the similar location of South Africa and Brazil in the internationaldistribution of power has constrained their broad foreign policy goals asintermediate states, and how domestic politics has determined their choices, thisthesis adds to the growing body of literature within the neoclassical realist tradition.By combining analyses of state structure and the international distribution of power,it is possible to gain valuable insight into how intermediate states judge or perceivetheir relative position in international politics, and how they select among options toexploit their position.As noted earlier, a neoclassical realist framework does not exclude internationalism,to the extent that internationalism may be regarded as both a feature of domesticideology, used for placating political allies domestically, and as a tool for buildingfollowership internationally. It may simply be regarded as another instrument ofinternational policy, and a vehicle for the pursuit of self-interested goals.Much of the scholarship on peripheral states is located within area studies, anddivorced from the mainstream of IR scholarship. This results in the simultaneousmarginalisation and exoticisation of peripheral polities and their internationalrelations. Neorealism assertively distanced itself from considering the politics ofdeveloping states, or indeed, any states that were not at the pinnacle of theinternational polar structure, and therefore not determining of it. As Waltz noted inhis focus on structural concepts, he was emphasising how they “help to explain big,290