by Michael Mosley from The Independent.
This piece offers a good review of the classic psychological studies done by Milgram and others on the willingness of people to comply with authorities.
My hunch is that all class structured societies rely on the obedience of their subordinates to follow orders. It is so much more efficient than having to threaten people with harm to follow the orders of ruling classes. Hence, education and general socialization of children strongly emphasizes obedience to authority figures. And many people, in my opinion, really never grow up and out of this training. They simply transfer their obedience from their parents and teachers to bosses, political figures, media "experts", etc.