I agree with this and I think tendency to change institutions exacerbates it because it means management and the climbers who tend to surround them become something of an in-group - that's who they know - and management just don't have ties to faculty at the new place.
Nate Holdren
Underrated part of academic politics is the managerial element: salary bump that comes with deanship (that one keeps permanently) striates an already stratified professorship and increases incentives to monitor, nitpick, discipline, scold, etc. Fissures that culminate in things like The Report.
