Professor of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Yale (US), Juan José Linz is the most prestigious Spanish sociologist abroad. A graduate in Economics and Political Science, and Law, from the University of Madrid, and doctor in Sociology from Columbia University, New York, he is the undoubted leader of a whole school of sociologists, the one who has had the greatest influence upon young Spanish students in his speciality.

The child of a German father and a Spanish mother, he was born in Bonn (Germany), on the 24th December 1926. In 1932 he moved to Spain, where he studied at high school, followed by degrees in Economics and Political Sciences, and Law, at the University of Madrid, where he won the graduation prize in Politics. Receiving a grant in 1950, he studied sociology at the University of Columbia, New York, where he obtained his PhD with a study into German elections.

Having become a member of Colombia University, he began to make his influence felt on Spanish sociology, with a series of empirical studies of great importance, carried out in cooperation with Spanish sociologists. Some of them began their pilgrimage to Juan José Linz´s American department, a process which still continues.

He returned to Spain in 1958 and carried out a study into Spanish businessmen. In 1961 he went back to New York as a lecturer at the University of Colombia. after teaching for one semester at the newly-established Autonomous University of Madrid, he moved to Yale University in 1968. he has also taught in the Universities of Berkeley, Stanford and Heidleberg, and in the European University Institute in Florence. he has been a Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the "Wissenschaftkolleg" in Berlin.

His works were a constant point of reference during the Spanish political reform, and his studies, in which he tackled such controversial subjects as terrorism or regional nationalism, have had great influence in understanding recent years in Spanish public life.

Linz´s work deals with a wide range of subjects, including studies into social structure and political parties in germany, businessmen and power in Spain, the structure and dynamics of social groups in the Iberian Peninsula, etc. His works on the sociology of youth and the sociology of fascism are especially well-known.

Also, his studies into the Spanish political system in recent times and Spanish society have had a very significant international impact. Furthermore, his theories of what he terms and classed "authoritarian regimes" and the processes of transition from dictatorship to democracy have been applied by numerous researchers to specific cases in Latin-America and Europe.

Linz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been president of the World Association of Public Opinion Research, member of the executive of the International Association of Sociology and chairman of its Sociology Committee. He belongs to the editing committee of various specialised journals.

Invested in 1975 as a Doctor "honoris causa" of the University of Granada, he was awarded in 1981 the European Essay prize for his book, "La caída de los regímenes democráticos". In September of the same year, the Foundation for Social Studies and Applied Sociology published his sociological report on political change in Spain.

The following are outstanding examples of his prolific work: "An Authoritarian Regime: The case of Spain", "El sistema de partidos en España", "Michels y su contribución a la sociología política", "Elites locales y cambio social en la Andalucía rural", "Early State Building and Late Peripheral Nationalism against the State", "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes", "La quiebra de las democracias", "Informe sobre el cambio político en España 1975- 1981", "Conflicto en Euskadi", "From Primordialism to Nationalism and Democracia: Presidencialismo o Parlamentarismo".