Stephen William Van Evera (born 10 November 1948) is a professor of

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

, specializing in

International Relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the Scientific method, scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities betwe ...

. His research includes U.S. foreign and national security policy as well as causes and prevention of war. He is a member of the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is a nonprofit organization that is independent and nonpartisan. CFR is based in New York Ci ...

Biography

Van Evera received his A.B. in government from Harvard and his Ph.D. in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. During the 1980s he was managing editor of the journal '' International Security''. Van Evera is the author of ''Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict'' (Cornell, 1999). He has also co edited ''Nuclear Diplomacy and Crisis Management'' (1990), ''Soviet Military Policy'' (1989), and ''The Star Wars Controversy'' (1986).

Academic work

Van Evera is considered a defensive realist, which is a branch of

structural realism Neorealism or structural realism is a theory of international relations that emphasizes the role of power politics in international relations, sees competition and conflict as enduring features and sees limited potential for cooperation. The anar ...

Offense-defense theory

In ''Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict'', Van Evera proposed Offense-Defense theory, which attempts to discern what factors increase the likelihood of war. Van Evera states three main hypotheses: # War will be more common in periods when conquest is easy, or is believed to be easy, than in other periods. # States that have, or believe they have, large offensive opportunities or defensive vulnerabilities will initiate and fight more wars than other states. # Actual examples of true imbalances are rare and explain only a moderate amount of history. However, false perceptions of these factors are common and thus explain a great deal of history. Van Evera wrote on these factors being causal in the outbreak of the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

in a famous 1984 article. Although

trench warfare Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising Trench#Military engineering, military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artille ...

and the development of the

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifl ...

meant that defensive strategies should have prevailed, many European nations were under the illusion that conquest was easy or that they were valuable. This misconception resulted in a drawn-out and bloody conflict. Recent discussion in international relations theory questions the idea of explaining the outbreak of World War I in terms of a ' cult of the offensive': with evidence showing that war planners – German ones especially – before 1914 being well aware of the heavy casualties implicit in offensive operations.

Process-tracing tests for affirming causal inferences

In his 1997 book ''Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science'', Van Evera authored an influential typology of process-tracing tests which distinguishes tests depending on how they adjudicate between theoretical expectations: * Straw-in-the-wind tests: Failure or passage of this test neither lends strong support for or against the theory * Hoop tests: Failure to pass a hoop test can be disqualifying for a theory but passing the hoop test does not necessarily lend strong support for the theory * Smoking gun tests: Passing a smoking gun test lends strong support for theory, whereas failure does not necessarily lend strong support against the theory * Double decisive tests: Passing a double decisive test lends strong support for the theory while also lending strong support against alternative theories

References

External links

*https://polisci.mit.edu/people/stephen-van-evera {{DEFAULTSORT:Van Evera, Stephen American political scientists International relations scholars Harvard College alumni UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni American military writers MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty 1948 births Living people