He also sat on the Securities and Investments Board and chaired the British Government's Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (1991–1993).
Runciman joined the faculty of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1950s as a historical sociologist and became a junior research fellow after submitting a thesis entitled Plato's Later Epistemology.
[1][3] Runciman's principal research interest was the application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to cultural and social selection.
[1] Runciman was invited by the Governor of the Bank of England to serve on the Securities and Investment Board (later to become the Financial Services Authority), from which he retired in 1998.
[6][1] Runciman was a member of the House of Lords as a hereditary peer from the time he inherited the viscountcy on 1 September 1989.
He spoke 26 times in the chamber until 11 November 1999 when he lost his right to sit there when the bulk of the hereditary peers were removed by the House of Lords Act 1999.