Most people who judge universities from the outside live in a world where centralized initiatives are the way in which work is accomplished. In fact, even within the decentralized university environment, administration and faculty working together are able to develop programs, to develop new initiatives, to develop whole new fields of study. It's true that, according to a survey done by the Carnegie Foundation, over half of all faculty think that their institutions are autocratically managed. But I think you have to balance that off against the fact that most institutions manage to strike viable arrangements. The shared government system does not allow faculty and administration to get too far from each other.
Faculty are inherently skeptical and inquisitive, cynical, and want to be left alone.
Most of them believe in the academy because they have gone through a fairly monastic process of getting a doctorate, and you don't get a doctorate by group work. Faculty tend to be wary of authority, and the really skillful administrators don't walk around like campus police looking for trouble. They develop collaborative relationships with the faculty to ensure that administrative processes are responsive to faculty needs. You spoke about decentralization on the American campus as a good thing, a kind of a healthy thing. For a lot of institutions, decentralization is a healthy thing.