Fernando Vallespin is Political Science Professor at the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, where he has been chairman of the Political Science Department and Vice-chancellor of the University. From 2004 to 2008 he has been President of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, a government related and publicly founded institute for public opinion and opinion polls. He has been Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University and visiting professor at universities such as Maryland, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Malasia and Veracruz in Mexico. He is author of several books -the latest on Populism and Thomas Hobbes- and over a hundred academic articles and book chapters. His main area of interest is Political and Democratic Theory. He is a staff and weekly columnist at the Spanish newspaper El Pais. He was recently appointed member of the Spanish Royal Academy for Moral and Political Sciences.