Dr George Lawson CLM 512

This course is available on the MSc in International Relations, MSc in International Relations (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in International Relations (Research) and MSc in International Relations Theory. This course is not available as an outside option.

All students are required to obtain permission of the Teacher Responsible by completing the online application linked to LSE for You.  Admission to the course is not guaranteed.

Revolutions are often considered to be a 'side order' to the 'main course' of International Relations.  But as this course explores, the lack of attention paid to revolutions is a mistake - revolutions have played a major part in the making of the modern international order.  From the 'Atlantic Revolutions' of the late 18th and early 19th centuries to the 'colour revolutions' of the early 21st century, revolutions have been constitutive of notions of sovereignty, order, justice, and more.  Revolutions have also been tightly bound up with dynamics of war and peace.  This course explores both the theory and practice of revolutions, teasing out their effects and examining the prospects for revolutionary change in the contemporary world.

List of Topics:

Part 1: Thinking about revolutions

1. What are revolutions?

2. Key themes in the study of revolutions

3. Revolutions in world politics

Part 2: The experience of revolutions

4. The Atlantic 'age of revolutions'

5. Socialist revolutions

6. Reading week

7. 'Third World' revolutions

8. The 'last great revolution'?

9. 'Colour' revolutions

Part 3 Revolution today

10. The Arab uprisings

11. Rethinking revolutions

10 hours of lectures and 20 hours of seminars in the LT.

The main aim of the course is to provide an opportunity for students to make informed judgements about how and in what ways revolutions have impacted on core features of modern international order.  Additional aims include assessment of the place of revolutions in the contemporary world and, more generally, the ability to connect theoretical arguments about revolutions with the substantive experience of revolutions.

In line with departmental policy, students on the course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the LT.

Students will also submit a 2-3 page outline of the assessed essay in Week 10, receiving comments and feedback in Week 11.

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Penguin: 1963)

Colin Beck, Radicals, Revolutionaries and Terrorists (Polity: 2015)

Mlada Bukovansky, The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton: 2002)

John Foran, Taking Power (Cambridge: 2005)

Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out (Cambridge: 2001)

Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics (Palgrave: 1999)

Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilley, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: 2001)

Daniel Ritter, The Iron Cage of Liberalism (Oxford: 2015)

Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolution (Cambridge: 1979)

Stephen Walt, Revolutions and War (Cornell: 1996)

Essay (70%, 4000 words) in the ST.
Presentation (15%) and blog post (15%) in the LT.

Assessment for the course is composed of a 4000 word essay (70%); weekly blog posts of 250 words each (15%) and a group seminar presentation (15%).