Juan José Linz

come in.

So Juan Lins was a Spanish political scientist, and he spent his career studying how democracies broke down in Europe and Latin America in the 20th century.

Levitsky and Zablot took the checklist that he wrote, Linz, and they updated it into four questions that any of us can ask about any politician.

Something I really like about this list is that it is meant to be broad so anyone anywhere can use it.

Sure.

So the, this idea of presidential, uh, um, uh, presidentialism, which a, a, a sociologist named Juan Linz, uh, really, uh, developed, uh, has particular resonance for today.

Uh, if you go back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration in the second term, one of the things that he was able to do was to create the executive office of the president.

Uh, in a so many ways over decades under Democrats and Republicans, that has stripped the cabinet of power, has become the locus of presidential power and where presidents are able to install mostly without, uh, Senate confirmation, uh, people within the executive branch who will do the president's bidding.

So what does it mean to be semi-loyal to democracy?

Well, this is a term taken, first of all, from the great political scientist Juan Lins, a Spanish political scientist who devoted his career to studying democratic breakdowns.

And he argued, and I think he's right, that it's rarely just a single autocrat or the folks who are most openly authoritarian who kill democracies, or at least they can't do it on their own.

No single autocrat can kill a democracy on his or her own.