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commitment”: “in other words, the government engages in low-risk behaviour and oftenavoids changes in policy”, in order to accommodate political opposition to its policies. 50This is just one of three possible alternatives that a government has in dealing withpolitical opposition to its chosen foreign policy. The other two are ‘mobilisation’ 51through legitimation of the regime and its policies; and, ‘insulation’, through themarginalisation of opposition. All three alternatives can have clear consequences inforeign policy outcomes. Accommodation may see a government being able to winover its critics, either by adopting a more muted line (avoiding risk), or by ‘payingoff’ opposition with side-payments. Legitimation of the regime sees leadersdiscrediting their adversaries, potentially resulting in more forceful foreign policyactions. Accommodation is the focus here because it is more prominent inparliamentary democracies or factionalised ruling parties. Legitimation reflects astrategy of greater coercion, where opponents cannot be co-opted, and also tends tooccur in periods of great political instability. Insulation, meanwhile, is a commonstrategy for political leaders hoping to “deflect or reduce domestic constraints ontheir foreign policy choices”, by closing the issue off from public scrutiny anddebate. 52Neoclassical realism will thus be utilised as a theoretical framework for analysing thestrategies of emergence of South Africa and Brazil, respectively. This framework isdeveloped in Chapter 3. With a shift in power at the system level as a centralassumption, the hypotheses guiding the enquiry are as follows:Hypothesis 1: The greater the institutional freedom and legitimating capacity of thegoverning party, the more autonomy inheres in key decision-making structures, thecloser the model approximates neorealism’s unitary actor. Decisions to allocateresources to international issues will be based on hard power considerations and50 Joe Hagan, Political Opposition and Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective(Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993): 128. Emphasis added.51 The term ‘mobilisation’ is used here in a different sense to that employed in theremainder of the thesis. Here it is used by Hagan to denote a potential instrument usedby governments for managing opposition to foreign policy, while the usage in the rest ofthe thesis refers to the proactive promotion of national wealth and military strength for agiven purpose, in this case foreign policy. Where the first meaning is intended, this willbe indicated.52 Joe Hagan, “Chapter 8: Domestic Political Explanations in the Analysis of ForeignPolicy”, pp117-143, in Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in its SecondGeneration, eds., Laura Neack, Jeanne A.K Hey, Patrick J. Haney (Englewood Cliffs:Prentice-Hall, 1995): 117-143.37