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adjust to shifts in their international environment” 150 , namely: state institutions,nationalism and ideology. 151 It is upon this basis that an analytical space is found forthe role played by governing parties in the formulation of foreign policy, both asholders of the levers of political power, and as repositories of ideology guidingforeign policy.As important as governing parties is the role of political leadership. Leaders do notoperate in isolation, and they cannot focus on one context, to the exclusion ofothers. 152 Leaders define states’ international and domestic constraints. Based on theirperceptions and interpretations, they build expectations, plan strategies, and urgeactions on their governments that conform to their judgements about what ispossible and likely to maintain them in their positions. Such perceptions help framegovernments’ orientations to international affairs. Leaders’ interpretations arise outof their experiences, goals, beliefs about the world, and sensitivity to the politicalcontext. 153Furthermore, “Whether and how …leaders judge themselves constrained dependson the nature of the domestic challenges to their leadership, how the leaders areorganised, and what they are like as people”. 154The immediate political vehicle within which leaders, such as Thabo Mbeki of SouthAfrica, and Lula da Silva of Brazil, constructed their foreign policy strategies was thepolitical party structure that brought them to power, and sought to perpetuate itsown tenure in power. This thesis operationalises their position by way of twovariables, institutional freedom 155 (or the degree to which power is centralised in anindividual or the governing party), and legitimating power (or the degree to whichindividuals or political parties are able to justify particular international actions).This party political structure is in turn located within a state structure that either150 Taliaferro, “State Building for Future Wars”, 488.151 Taliaferro, “State Building for Future Wars”, 487.152 Laura Neack, The New Foreign Policy: Power Seeking in a Globalized Era. 2 ndEdition (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2008): 49.153 Herman and Hagan, cited in Neack, 2008: 49.154 Ibid.155 This factor is synonymous with John Hobson’s ‘high domestic agential power’ or ‘highinstitutional autonomy’, which leaves the state, and in the current context, the politicalparty, relatively free to pursue its foreign policy interests, with minimal significantdomestic opposition. See John M. Hobson, The State and International Relations(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).82