Within and Beyond the 'Fourth Generation' of Revolutionary TheoryRecent 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, structural opening, and collective action, which arise from the intersection of international, economic, political, and symbolic factors. Despite the promise of this approach, this article argues that fourth generation scholarship remains an unfulfilled agenda. The aim of this article is to work within -and beyond -fourth generation theory in order to establish the theoretical foundations that can underpin contemporary work on revolutions. It does so in three ways: first, by promoting a shift from an attributional to a processual ontology; second, by advocating a relational rather than substantialist account of social action; and third, by fostering an approach that sees revolutions as inter-societal 'all the way down'. 1The (unfulfilled) promise of fourth generation theory 2 Recent years have seen renewed interest in the study of revolution (e.g. Chenoweth and Stephan 2011;Goldstone 2011Goldstone , 2014Nepstad 2011;Beck , 2014Beck , 2015Colgan, 2012Colgan, , 2013 Weyland 2012;Beissinger 2014;Lawson 2015a and2015b;Ritter 2015).Spurred by events such as the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the Maidan movement in Ukraine, and Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, these studies have largely sought to analyze contemporary protest movements from within the framework established by 'fourth generation' approaches to revolution (Foran 1993;Goldstone 2001). Fourth generation approaches see revolutions as conjunctural amalgams of systemic crisis, structural opening, and collective action, which arise from an intersection of international, economic, political, and symbolic factors (Foran 1993: 10-17; Goldstone 2001: 175-6; Lawson 2004: 70-6; Ritter 2015: 12). Although, as highlighted below, such an approach offers a number of improvements on previous generations of revolutionary theory, this article argues that fourth generation accounts remain an unfulfilled agenda. In many respects, rather than provide a new theoretical foundation for the study of revolutions, fourth generation approaches have been 'additive' in terms of the factors they survey and the universe of cases they examine (Foran 1993: 17). The aim of this article is to extend the insights offered by fourth generation approaches in order to provide more robust theoretical foundations for the study of contemporary revolutionary episodes.The argument unfolds in three main sections. First, the article unpacks four generations of revolutionary theory. The idea that there has been a generational evolution in the study of revolution can foster an over...

Original citation:Originally published in Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George (2015) The global transformation: history, modernity and the making of international relations. Cambridge studies in international relations.

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Buzan, Barry and George Lawson. (2012) The Global Transformation: The Nineteenth Century and the Making of Modern International Relations. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12011 
© 2012 International Studies Association 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 processes of industrialization, rational state‐building, and ideologies of progress served to destabilize existing forms of order and promote novel institutional formations. The changing character of organized violence is used to illustrate these changes. The article concludes by examining how IR could be rearticulated around a more pronounced engagement with “the global transformation.”

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). Interestingly enough, this binary is one reproduced throughout the social sciences. As such, there is a bigger story to the apparently 'eternal divide' between history and social science than first meets the eye. This article uses the various ways in which history is used -and abused -in IR to probe more deeply into the relationship between history and social science as a whole. This exploration reveals four frameworks, two drawn from history (context and narrative) and two drawn from social science (eventfulness and ideal-typification) which illustrate the necessary co-implication of the two enterprises. The article employs these tools as a means of re-imagining the relationship between history and social science (including IR), conceiving this as a single intellectual journey in which both are permanently in view.