I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pr

I always assumed it was the dark corollary of trickle down economics, and one of the few places it works. You throw a bunch of money at a higher up, and the pressure flows downhill. Just like something else that flows downhill that we're all aware of. Eventually you end up with a system where there's a buffer of a few layers between the people benefitting and the people actually signing off on something, and after a while it's not explicit as much as "a feeling I got that my managers expected this to go through."