No it comes from spending a lot of time in my home country (the UK), which despite nominally being a parliamentary democracy is very clearly run by a small number of (largely unelected) people at the top.

The same as every company I've ever worked for, large or small.

Some systems obfuscate it more than others, but at the end of the day somebody has to have the executive power to make a decision when the chips are down, or you just have chaos