When management becomes separated from both the people at the coalface (the people actually doing the jobs the organisation needs to do) and the founders/president/CEO, then behaviour changes. In most organisations, this is at 3 layers of management (not including the actual workers and the top management layer, so 5 layers deep for the whole organisation). After this point, presentation and political acumen outweigh all other factors for the middle management layer, because all other factors can always be "spun" to look good, or blamed on a scapegoat, etc. - there's no direct link between what the middle-manager did and what the result was, so presentation matters more.

Once that happens, the organisation will promote people who do politics well. It's only a matter of time before the entire organisation is focused on internal politics (apart from the people actually doing the work, who become pawns in political moves). As the organisation grows and the layers expand and more layers of management become disconnected, it gets worse.

In a company, eventually the company will get disrupted and die off. In a government that's not a thing, and it'll just keep expanding and playing politics. This gets worse for government departments headed by a politician, because the politician is very focused on getting something they can boast about to their electorate in the few years they have in the department. And they're usually very familiar with the kinds of political games being played.

Source: We studied this in my MBA, it's a known thing. If I still had my textbooks I could dig out a reference.