I'm really not so sure.  People don't really have any reason to pledge allegiance to any particular pool long term, nor is there the real life problem of making a choice (voting) and then being stuck with it for years.

I mine with BTCGuild because I like their website.  A day from now I could decide I like someone else and mine in their pool.  A day later I could switch back.  There is hardly any cost in doing so, for me or any other miner, so any power a pool operator has is extremely temporary and entirely contingent on keeping their miners happy.  That makes a pool operator doing bad things seem at least fairly unlikely.