Yeah sure why not? Stakeholders simply make their demands of the market and leave if it doesn't deliver. Having a voting process essentially guarantees a central authority to count and enforce the votes.
Choosing to participate or not participate is a form of voting.
Not necessarily. You can implement these things in code - that is how these things activate anyway. Of course one could say that the person/people that create the code and set the parameters could be seen as a point of centralisation. I don't think there is a simple solution!
Agreed. In the end, the people who have invested the most time, money and energy into it will fight the most for it and enforce their vision. I believe this is why you see the miners, the exchanges, etc. having these meetings and pushing proposals forward.
Yes and since they have the most invested they are likely frustrated by the current stalemate even more than the regular user.
I completely agree. I believe that some of the large mining pools might expand their influence and get things done by sponsoring/hiring a Bitcoin developer to contribute to Core. This is how influence expands in the Linux space.