A century ago, Weber asked himself "why do people obey?" Today the question is reversed: "why don’t people obey anymore?". Authority has gone. It has been worn out and, a little at a time, has been de-legitimized.
Authority based on tradition was probably the first to be eroded away. The authority of the eternal yesterday diminished rapidly when the new dethroned the inheritance, when that which arrived was revealed to be not only superior quantitatively, but also qualitatively more effective than what was there before. This process did not characterize only work techniques, but also the models of organization of politics and economics of the past that derived from those techniques, which have gradually been taken out of circulation by the new regulatory principles. Even today, when we speak about the crisis of authority, we tend to be speaking about the crisis of those expressing the skills, rules and behaviors of a universe that no longer exists..........
