George Lawson
Biographic Data
| ID | 142804 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Lawson |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Lawson |
| SIGNATURE | LAWSON G |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9110-1883 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 71 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 392 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 69 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1958 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Revolutions and World Order
This forum assesses the impact of forms of ‘unruly politics’, especially revolutions, on the modern world order. It is oriented around the 2025 Fred Halliday lecture, delivered by George Lawson at the London School of Economics in May 2025, which has been lightly edited for this forum. In his lecture, Lawson argues that the contemporary era of ‘polycrisis’ is also one of ‘polyprotest’ – multiple, interlinked forms of turbulence are being accompan…
Nations, States and Empires By JohnHall, Cambridge
Looking back, looking around, looking forward
This introduction to the forum marking the 75th anniversary of the Department of International Relations (IR) at the Australian National University (ANU) is organised in three parts. First, it ‘looks back’ at the origins and evolution of the department, highlighting the opportunities and tensions that have arisen from the housing of the department within administrative units concerned with area studies, particularly the Asia-Pacific region. ‘Look…
Vision and method in global historical sociology
Recent years have seen the development of a range of approaches concerned with theorizing and empirically demonstrating the significance of “transboundary entanglements” – patterns of connections between and across social sites. This work, spanning disciplines from sociology to international relations, and including subfields from postcolonial scholarship to global history, seeks to transcend the methodological nationalism associated with much pr…
Revolutions Are Back
Deadly Decision in Beijing
The Historicity of International Politics
The past is constantly present, not least in the study of imperialism and imperial forms of power in international politics. This volume shows how historical trajectories have shaped international affairs covering a wide range of imperial and (post-) colonial settings in international politics, substantiating the claim that imperial and colonial legacies - and how they have transformed over time - are foundational to the historicity of internatio…
Global History and International Relations
This chapter examines the relationship between global history and International Relations (IR) with the aim of showing how a closer engagement would enrich both disciplines. The chapter begins by charting the multiple forms that global history takes, highlighting some of the key issues at stake in the global turn. It then examines the ways in which IR has engaged with, or failed to engage with, these histories across a variety of theoretical appr…
Three visions of the global
Global international relations (IR) generates space for theoretical expressions drawn from outside the experiences of the modern West. Alongside these demands for theoretical pluralism can be found a concern for widening IR's historical frames of reference. Yet, to date, the relationship between global IR and history is the least developed part of the project's agenda. This article suggests two ways in which this relationship can be strengthened.…
Revolutions in the Twenty-First Century
Review of ‘Handbook of Revolutions in the 21st Century: The New Waves of Revolutions, and the Causes and Effects of Disrup-tive Political Change’. Edited by Jack A. Goldstone, Leonid Grinin, and Andrey Korotayev. Springer, 2022. ISBN 978-3-030-86467-5.This is a big book in more ways than one. In its 41 chapters, readers will find much to keep them occupied. The volume’s range is vast, covering several hundred years of history and an equally expan…
Recognizing injustice
Struggles for recognition, rooted in the desire to be acknowledged by others, are fundamental to the stability of international orders. All international orders face actors with recognition grievances, and sometimes these grievances become major sources of contention. At the same time, each international order faces struggles that are specific to its mode of legitimation because they are rooted in challenges over the constituent elements of that …
On Revolutions
On Revolutions integrates insights from diverse fields—civil resistance studies, international relations, social movements, terrorism—to offes new ways of thinking about the study of revolution. Conventional lines of thought draw on a number of categorical distinctions: social versus political revolutions, structure versus agency, violent versus nonviolent strategies, domestic versus international factors, and success versus failure. In contrast,…
For a progressive realism
What ideas and concepts might be used to reinvigorate a progressive approach to Australian foreign policy? In contrast to the clarity of the international vision provided by right-wing movements, there is uncertainty about the contours of a progressive approach to contemporary Australian foreign policy. This article outlines the basis of a ‘progressive realism’ that can challenge right-wing accounts. Progressive realism combines a ‘realistic’ dia…
From revolution and terrorism to revolutionary terrorism
What is the relationship between revolution and terrorism? Much of the time, terrorism and revolution are taken to be distinct forms of political contention. This article argues that, to the contrary, their relationship is much closer than is often imagined. We show that a range of contemporary terrorist groups contain revolutionary elements: they seek to capture and hold territory, and see themselves as part of movements where the goal is to tra…
Revolutionary generosity
China Through the Lens of Modernity
This article examines China’s encounter with modernity from the 19th century to the present day. It builds on the historical narrative of modernity developed by Buzan and Lawson (2015), and two theoretical perspectives: uneven and combined development, and differentiation theory. The article opens with a short history of modernity, establishing that it is not a static phenomenon, but a continuously unfolding process. It then explores five periods…
Response to reviewers – Global Historical Sociology
It is a great honour for our book to receive such close attention from four stellar commentators. As Angelika Epple notes in her contribution, the project that \nculminated in Global Historical Sociology (GHS) ran for several years. During \nthis time, we presented our ideas, and those of our colleagues, on many occasions. The discussions that ensued made us think that we were onto something. The richness of engagement that make-up the contributi…
Anatomies of Revolution
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolution. Spurred by events like the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the rise of Islamic State, and the emergence of populism, a new age of revolution has generated considerable interest. Yet, even as empirical studies of revolutions are thriving, there has been a stall in theories of revolution. Anatomies of Revolution offers a novel account of how revolutions begin, u…
The Social Sources of Chinese Power
This review essay critically engages Dingxin Zhao's The Confucian-Legalist State. While sympathetic to much of Zhao's book, the essay teases out the wider implications of his project. It identifies four shortcomings and two possible extensions of Zhao's argument, with particular attention on how his book contributes to debates in International Relations
Anatomies of Revolution
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolution. Spurred by events like the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the rise of Islamic State, and the emergence of populism, a new age of revolution has generated considerable interest. Yet, even as empirical studies of revolutions are thriving, there has been a stall in theories of revolution. Anatomies of Revolution offers a novel account of how revolutions begin, u…
Emanuel Adler, World Ordering
Happy anniversary? States and social revolutions revisited
Forty years after its publication, Theda Skocpol's States and social revolutions remains the pre-eminent book in the study of revolutions. But how should the book be assessed from the vantage point of contemporary world politics? This essay reviews Skocpol's contribution to three main issue-areas: theory, structural approaches and the international. It argues that, rich as it has been, the research agenda initiated by States and social revolution…
Global Historical Sociology
The International Origins of Social and Political Theory
This article introduces the main themes that animate this special issue: the necessary entanglement of theory and history, the cortical relationship between theory and practice, and the transboundary (i.e., international) relations that help to constitute systems of both thought and practice. We integrate the contributions to the special issue within these overarching themes and identify their main contributions. We make three core arguments: fir…
International Origins of Social and Political Theory
The eternal divide? History and International Relations
On one level, history is used by all parts of the International Relations (IR) discipline. But lurking beneath the surface of IR's approach to history lies a well-entrenched binary. Whereas mainstream positions use history as a means to fill in their theoretical frames (seeing history as a kind of 'scripture' of abstract lessons), many post-positivists reduce history to a pick-and-mix of contingent hiccups (a 'butterfly' of what-ifs and maybes). …
World Systems Analysis
What is History in International Relations
To some extent, history has always been a core feature of the international imagination. On both sides of the Atlantic, leading figures in the discipline such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman have all employed history as a means of illuminating their research. Indeed, Wight made searching the desiderata of international history the sine qua non of international theory, the best that could be hoped for …
The Global Transformation
Unlike many other social sciences, international relations (IR) spend relatively little time assessing the impact of the nineteenth century on its principal subject matter. As a result, the discipline fails to understand the ways in which a dramatic reconfiguration of power during the "long nineteenth century" served to recast core features of international order. This article examines the extent of this lacuna and establishes the ways in which p…
Within and Beyond the 'Fourth Generation' of Revolutionary Theory
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolutions. Yet the burgeoning interest in revolutionary events has not been matched by a comparable interest in the development of revolutionary theory. For the most part, empirical studies of revolutions remain contained within the parameters established by the 'fourth generation' of revolutionary theory. This body of work sees revolutions as conjunctural amalgams of systemic crisis, stru…
Sociology and international relations
While sociological concepts have often been implicitly used in International Relations (IR), recent years have seen a more explicit engagement between IR and Sociology. As with any such interdisciplinary assignation, there are both possibilities and challenges contained within this move: possibilities in terms of reducing IR's intellectual autism and opening the discipline towards potentially fertile terrain that was never, actually, that distant…
The Promise of Historical Sociology in International Relations
This essay draws on historical sociology, in particular on historical institutionalism, to critique the micro, macro, and meso-level explanations of contemporary international relations theory. Focusing on institutional development, change, and disintegration; it proposes a conjectural, mid-range approach to capturing the processes of large-scale change that are occurring in the international realm. This essay seeks to broaden the field’s scope b…
Historical Sociology in International Relations
Revolution, Nonviolence, and the Arab Uprisings
This article combines insights from the literature on revolutions with that on nonviolent protest in order to assess the causes and outcomes of the Arab uprisings. The article makes three main arguments: first, international dynamics were the precipitant cause of the Arab uprisings; second, because the region's “neopatrimonial” regimes were particularly vulnerable to shifts in state-military relations, the hold of elites over state coercive appar…
Capitalism and the emergent world order
The two-centuries-old hegemony of the West is coming to an end. The ‘revolutions of modernity’ that fuelled the rise of the West are now accessible to all states. As a consequence, the power gap that developed during the nineteenth century and which served as the foundation for a core–periphery international order is closing. The result is a shift from a world of ‘centred globalism’ to one of ‘decentred globalism’. At the same time, as power is b…
Revolutions and the international
Theory, history, and the global transformation
This response concentrates on two sets of issues raised by the contributors to the symposium: the first centers around theory, the second around history. On the former, our argument is that, contrary to some of the comments made by our interlocutors, the book contributes to theoretical debates ranging from issues of causation to those concerning history as a theoretical enterprise. We use these arguments to engage with, and extend, historical que…
Rethinking benchmark dates in International Relations
International Relations has an ‘orthodox set’ of benchmark dates by which much of its research and teaching is organized: 1500, 1648, 1919, 1945 and 1989. This article argues that International Relations scholars need to question the ways in which these orthodox dates serve as internal and external points of reference, think more critically about how benchmark dates are established, and generate a revised set of benchmark dates that better reflec…
China Through the Lens of Modernity
This article examines China’s encounter with modernity from the 19th century to the present day. It builds on the historical narrative of modernity developed by Buzan and Lawson (2015), and two theoretical perspectives: uneven and combined development, and differentiation theory. The article opens with a short history of modernity, establishing that it is not a static phenomenon, but a continuously unfolding process. It then explores five periods…
For a Public International Relations
The last few years have seen an opening up of what is considered to be the legitimate terrain of international relations (IR). This move is, for the most part, extremely welcome. Yet, the multiple theoretical and empirical openings in IR since the end of the Cold War have failed to elucidate many of the puzzles, questions and problems posed by the contemporary conjuncture. There are a number of reasons for this failure ranging from the stickiness…
Urartian Reliefs at Adılcevaz, on Lake Van, and a Rock Relief from the Karasu, near Birecik
The Medieval Castle at Adılcevaz, on the north shore of Lake Van, incorporated in its walls fragments of a relief sculpture carved in basalt. Six such fragments have now been recovered. Two Urartian inscribed blocks, also of basalt, which have for some years stood outside the primary school, had also, no doubt, been used in the wall of the mediaeval castle. The fragments of sculpture belong to a relief representing a god or king standing on a bul…
Recognizing injustice
Struggles for recognition, rooted in the desire to be acknowledged by others, are fundamental to the stability of international orders. All international orders face actors with recognition grievances, and sometimes these grievances become major sources of contention. At the same time, each international order faces struggles that are specific to its mode of legitimation because they are rooted in challenges over the constituent elements of that …
For a progressive realism
What ideas and concepts might be used to reinvigorate a progressive approach to Australian foreign policy? In contrast to the clarity of the international vision provided by right-wing movements, there is uncertainty about the contours of a progressive approach to contemporary Australian foreign policy. This article outlines the basis of a ‘progressive realism’ that can challenge right-wing accounts. Progressive realism combines a ‘realistic’ dia…
The untimely historical sociologist
This article examines the historical sociology that informs Andrew Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems . On the sociological side, it critically assesses Linklater’s use of Elias and Wight, arguing that his ‘higher level synthesis’ is internally incompatible. On the historical side, the article argues that the occlusion of the transnational interactions that, in great measure, drive historical development means tha…
Beyond hypocrisy? Debating the ‘fact’ and ‘value’ of sovereignty in contemporary world politics
A Realistic Utopia? Nancy Fraser, Cosmopolitanism and the Making of a Just World Order
Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, academics, policy makers and commentators continue to be puzzled by the shape, form and content of contemporary world politics. The fluidity of the post-Cold War era has seen the elevation of largely functional explanations for why things are to a more transcendent set of ideas about how social relations can be made afresh. This shift from ideology to utopia is no idle problem, for what it tends t…
A Conversation with Michael Mann
Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a concerted effort by International Relations (IR) scholars to engage with classical social theory, a tradition that takes in figures such as Max Weber and Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills and Raymond Aron, and more recently, Anthony Giddens and Charles Tilly. Of these comparative macro-sociologists, perhaps the most interesting from an IR perspective is Michael Mann whose oeuvre, now spanning four decad…
Negotiated revolutions
This article is an attempt to rescue revolution, both as concept and practice, from the triumphalism of the contemporary world. To that end, the article uses three transformations from authoritarian rule – the end of apartheid in South Africa, the collapse of communism in the Czech Republic and the transition from military dictatorship to market democracy in post-Pinochet Chile – in order to test the ways in which these contemporary manifestation…
Three visions of the global
Global international relations (IR) generates space for theoretical expressions drawn from outside the experiences of the modern West. Alongside these demands for theoretical pluralism can be found a concern for widening IR's historical frames of reference. Yet, to date, the relationship between global IR and history is the least developed part of the project's agenda. This article suggests two ways in which this relationship can be strengthened.…
The past, present, and future of intervention
Despite the prominent place of intervention in contemporary world politics, debate is limited by two weaknesses: first, an excessive presentism; and second, a focus on normative questions to the detriment of analysis of the longer-term sociological dynamics that fuel interventionary pressures. In keeping with the focus of the Special Issue on the ways in which intervention is embedded within modernity, this article examines the emergence of inter…
Urartian Reliefs at Adılcevaz, on Lake Van, and a Rock Relief from the Karasu, near Birecik
The Medieval Castle at Adılcevaz, on the north shore of Lake Van, incorporated in its walls fragments of a relief sculpture carved in basalt. Six such fragments have now been recovered. Two Urartian inscribed blocks, also of basalt, which have for some years stood outside the primary school, had also, no doubt, been used in the wall of the mediaeval castle. The fragments of sculpture belong to a relief representing a god or king standing on a bul…
Measured Plans of Urartian Fortresses
This article comprises descriptive and explanatory notes on a number of plans made during a plane-table survey carried out by the authors in the Van region in the summer of 1957. In addition to the plans and photographs, there are two details, one being an elevation. The form of publication is partly determined by the appearance of sketch-plans of most of these Urartian fortresses in a preliminary article. Apart from correction of certain errors …
Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, Vol. 1: 1638–1660
This calendar provides, with full annotation and indexes, the substance of the complete surviving correspondence of the Puritan divine Richard Baxter, making available a rich source for the religious, political, and cultural history of the 17th century.
Politica Sacra et Civilis
Lawson's Politica is a systematic treatise on politics in church and state, and is arguably the most significant work of political theory to have been printed during the Restoration crisis of 1659–60. The work was widely discussed during the seventeenth century and its conceptual vocabulary applied in discussions of the Revolution of 1688–9, when it was also posthumously republished. Despite Lawson's fame, however, his work fell into relative obs…
Rosenberg's Ode to Bauer, Kinkel and Willich
Negotiated revolutions
This article is an attempt to rescue revolution, both as concept and practice, from the triumphalism of the contemporary world. To that end, the article uses three transformations from authoritarian rule – the end of apartheid in South Africa, the collapse of communism in the Czech Republic and the transition from military dictatorship to market democracy in post-Pinochet Chile – in order to test the ways in which these contemporary manifestation…
The Promise of Historical Sociology in International Relations
This essay draws on historical sociology, in particular on historical institutionalism, to critique the micro, macro, and meso-level explanations of contemporary international relations theory. Focusing on institutional development, change, and disintegration; it proposes a conjectural, mid-range approach to capturing the processes of large-scale change that are occurring in the international realm. This essay seeks to broaden the field’s scope b…
The Social Sources of Life, the Universe and Everything
Michael Mann is best known, in International Relations (IR) circles at least, for his two-volume work, The Sources of Social Power, an attempt to chart and assess the development of world-historical development from `the beginning' to the twentieth century. 1 But Mann's career, which spans over four decades, also encompasses forays into state theory, militarism, empire, fascism, ethnic cleansing and globalisation. 2 The interview covers these var…
A Conversation with Michael Mann
Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a concerted effort by International Relations (IR) scholars to engage with classical social theory, a tradition that takes in figures such as Max Weber and Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills and Raymond Aron, and more recently, Anthony Giddens and Charles Tilly. Of these comparative macro-sociologists, perhaps the most interesting from an IR perspective is Michael Mann whose oeuvre, now spanning four decad…
World Systems Analysis
The Art of Coercion
During the latter stages of World War II, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic faced an unenviable task: deciding what to do with a war-ravaged Germany—a country that had seen its economy decimated, its infrastructure destroyed, and its state capacity crippled. US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, with the initial support of both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, favored reducing Germany to a state of quasi-feudali…
Historical Sociology in International Relations
What is History in International Relations
To some extent, history has always been a core feature of the international imagination. On both sides of the Atlantic, leading figures in the discipline such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman have all employed history as a means of illuminating their research. Indeed, Wight made searching the desiderata of international history the sine qua non of international theory, the best that could be hoped for …
A Realistic Utopia? Nancy Fraser, Cosmopolitanism and the Making of a Just World Order
Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, academics, policy makers and commentators continue to be puzzled by the shape, form and content of contemporary world politics. The fluidity of the post-Cold War era has seen the elevation of largely functional explanations for why things are to a more transcendent set of ideas about how social relations can be made afresh. This shift from ideology to utopia is no idle problem, for what it tends t…
For a Public International Relations
The last few years have seen an opening up of what is considered to be the legitimate terrain of international relations (IR). This move is, for the most part, extremely welcome. Yet, the multiple theoretical and empirical openings in IR since the end of the Cold War have failed to elucidate many of the puzzles, questions and problems posed by the contemporary conjuncture. There are a number of reasons for this failure ranging from the stickiness…
Beyond hypocrisy? Debating the ‘fact’ and ‘value’ of sovereignty in contemporary world politics
Adding Insult to Injury
The Global 1989
1989 signifies the collapse of Soviet communism and the end of the Cold War, a moment generally recognized as a triumph for liberal democracy and when capitalism became global. The Global 1989 challenges these ideas. An international group of prominent scholars investigate the mixed, paradoxical and even contradictory outcomes engendered by these events, unravelling the intricacies of this important moment in world history. Although the political…
Fred Halliday
Fred Halliday was one of the most important scholars of his generation. This article examines Halliday’s intellectual influences, assesses his contribution to International Relations (IR) and probes the broader challenges which his work raises. Halliday had a direct impact on IR through his interventions in historical sociology, revolutions and gender studies, and through his capacity to intertwine analytical, normative and political registers. M…
The global 1989
1989 signifies the collapse of Soviet communism and the end of the Cold War, a moment generally recognised as a triumph for liberal democracy and when capitalism became global. The Global 1989 challenges these ideas. An international group of prominent scholars investigate the mixed, paradoxical and even contradictory outcomes engendered by these events, unravelling the intricacies of this important moment in world history. Although the political…
Sociology and international relations
While sociological concepts have often been implicitly used in International Relations (IR), recent years have seen a more explicit engagement between IR and Sociology. As with any such interdisciplinary assignation, there are both possibilities and challenges contained within this move: possibilities in terms of reducing IR's intellectual autism and opening the discipline towards potentially fertile terrain that was never, actually, that distant…
The eternal divide? History and International Relations
On one level, history is used by all parts of the International Relations (IR) discipline. But lurking beneath the surface of IR's approach to history lies a well-entrenched binary. Whereas mainstream positions use history as a means to fill in their theoretical frames (seeing history as a kind of 'scripture' of abstract lessons), many post-positivists reduce history to a pick-and-mix of contingent hiccups (a 'butterfly' of what-ifs and maybes). …
Hierarchy in World Politics
Halliday's revenge
Fred Halliday saw revolution and war as the dual motors of modern international order. However, while war occupies a prominent place in International Relations (IR), revolutions inhabit a more residual location. For Halliday, this is out of keeping with their impact—in particular, revolutions offer a systemic challenge to existing patterns of international order in their capacity to generate alternative orders founded on novel forms of political …
Lawson
Political science (53 works) · Sociology (50 works) · Law (49 works) · Politics (40 works) · Law (28 works) · Epistemology (26 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Social science (24 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (21 works) · International relations (20 works)