This is nuts. Having management approve meetings? How about "learn to communicate: decline unnecessary meetings and figure out how to reconcile disagreements".
Isn't it the same thing? The approvals are to verify that the meeting is necessary.
I'd assume that other communication is done semi-formally, e.g. a slack group or call. Updates are asynchronous, someone does an update and the the whole group knows. Anything where you have to block out 2 hours of everyone's time should be approved.
They are not the same thing. I'm not disagreeing with the specific example you supplied, either.
As much as I dislike pointless meetings, this approach would not work in my workplace. Senior management would view this as a request to be babysat. Employees are all expected to host and attend meetings, and everyone is responsible for the value of this time|work.