Part of it probably has to do with "Old World" habits and conflicts, as well as peculiarities of property ownership. I imagine that as the population of Orthodox churches shifts away from immigrants or people who have grown up in that culture, this model will fade away.
Also, the presence of former Catholics probably helps, since they have a different experience with church structure. Protestants in the US tend to have church break-ups on a fairly regular basis (hence the scores of different denominations), but I suspect that most of those who become Orthodox come from the more stable churches, and they probably contribute to stability, too.
It would be lovely to hit a happy medium between tiny warring cells and a vast amorphous top-down entity...but perhaps there's no ideal situation anywhere short of Heaven!
Kolokotronis will tell you that the most avid "obey the bishop no matter what" types in the GOA during their recent unpleasantries were disproportionately Protestant converts. We certainly found that during the unpleasantries in the parish situation I mentioned above that the "he's the priest and therefore can do no wrong and must be obeyed" contingent was almost entirely Protestant converts.
On the other hand Catholics converting to Orthodoxy sometimes "feel their oats" a bit...
But I do think that at root, former Catholics (and, actually, Anglicans are like this, too)have a lower tolerance for division and more of a tendency to tolerate imperfections in order to keep it -- which is a related but separate issue to the question of clerical obedience. And this is indeed healthy.