Abstract

Juan José Linz Storch de Gracia passed away in October of 2013. Linz was undoubtedly one the finest political sociologists in the world. Legendary for the encyclopedic breadth of his knowledge, his ideas and writings deeply influenced debates surrounding a vast array of the century’s most important political problems.

Linz’s empirical and theoretical contributions to scholarly research and literature were legion. He contributed with path-breaking work on regime types, the dynamics of democratic breakdowns, transitions to democracy, democratic institutional design, presidentialism versus parliamentarism, parties and party systems, political and business elites, federalism, nationalism, and fascism.

This talk will review the main contributions of Linz to the fields of comparative politics, democratic theory, and sociology, with a particular emphasis on the continuing pertinence of many of his lessons for the most salient political debates in contemporary Spain.