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Intervening variable (X 1 ): The ruling party and its legitimating ideologies, along with theextent of its freedom of action in formulating foreign policy. This includes anaccount of the interaction between the ruling party, the legislature, the executive andthe foreign policy bureaucracy in forging broad lines of foreign policy strategy.These interactions are analysed through the lenses of two categories: institutionalfreedom and legitimating capacity.The causal factor of special theoretical interest is the role of the ruling party, giventhat it provides the head of state, and numerous other foreign policy functionaries,as well as the overall legitimating national discourses. If the governing party is foundto be theoretically significant then this means that greater care should be taken, inplotting the trajectory of future rising states, of the ideologies and values espousedby the ruling party of a state, rather than its leader exclusively. Neoclassical realismpredicts that states would seek to address an imbalance of power, but that theywould possess differing abilities to do so, and various constraints on their action.The claim is posited here that the governing party is key to mobilising andextracting these abilities.South Africa and Brazil each represent a ‘tough’ test of the neoclassical realistapproach, because each state occupies a relatively peaceful environment, and theUnited States, a historical ‘offshore balancer’ in both the Southern African andSouth American regions, has been largely absent from both during the period underconsideration. Each state may thus have been expected to expand their reach andseek to fill power vacuums in their regions. That neither state has selectedaggressive expansion – as might be predicted by neorealism – is explained bydomestic factors, such as prevailing ideologies and party politics, in addition tosystemic factors and power balances.Thus, where governing parties domestically face opposition or the threat ofopposition, they are less likely to engage in international activism. State powerrequires a stable social base for its projection abroad.39