Recent events here in America have increasingly exposed the rapid collapse of the idea of authority in late modernity. Authority, as Oliver O’Donovan has frequently noted, has a mysterious, elusive quality, and it can disappear in a hurry. This is not to say that authority may not be objective; there are indeed authorities which morally demand our respect and obedience whether or not we are inclined to grant them this claim. But to be effective, authority has to be believed in. In this, it is much like credit, and a credit crisis (that is to say, a financial crisis) has the same logic of self-fulfillment that an authority crisis has.
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