Authority ceases to exist not when it is not more or less fully obeyed, but when it ceases to give orders... one could give a good description of the supposedly democratic societies in which we live by the simple statement: within In these societies, the ontology of command has taken the place of an ontology of affirmation, not in the clear form of the imperative, but in the more insidious form of advice, invitation, notice, which are given in the name of security, so that obedience to the order takes the form of cooperation, and often the form of command to oneself. Giorgio Agamben