07/10/2013
Ángel Rivero, Professor of Political Science, UAM
Juan José Linz died last Tuesday in New Haven (USA). He was the most important Spanish figure of international Political Science. Linz was born in Germany to a Spanish mother and a German father but was raised in Spain. His studies were conducted at the University of Madrid from where he went to the United States as a graduate trainee in 1950. His intention was to attend the New School for Social Research where Hannah Arendt was working and who, a year later, in 1951, published the three volumes of her very famous The Origins of Totalitarianism. However, Spanish authorities did not seem to consider that destination appropriate, too linked to those who had fled fascism in Europe, and suggested Columbia instead, where he completed his doctoral thesis under the direction of Seymour Martin Lipset. And it was in the United States, particularly in Yale University, where he developed his career from a constant academic and emotional attention to the problems of Spain.
In line with his first youthful interest, Linz addressed the differences between political regimes and in particular between Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. A taxonomic audacity which earned him the distrust and worse from those who have made Franco a convenient justification for all their actions. But if the distinction interested Linz it was not as an ideological justification but to study authoritarianism and, in particular, its relationship with democracy. That is, Linz's concern was always democracy. First, coming from a gloomy atmosphere with regard to democracy, its destruction, but later, in the final years of the 70's which were full of hope, the way to its realisation: the transition and democratic consolidation.A process which, in its Spanish version, afforded him joys as a professional and Spaniard. To both issues, he devoted books and essays of permanent value. In times like the current one, when Spanish democracy faces challenges and difficulties, his committedanalytical vision, his lack of sectarianism and his constructive vision of social analysis will make his absence be felt more.
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