Always has been. Developers, which is the group you're referring to, always have been the domain expertise and the group which brought the changes, as long as they formed consensus. If you look into the real problems on why some softforks and hardforks failed, you'll notice lack of unanimity from developers.

Unlike then, the project is now orders of magnitude different in size. There are literally thousands of developers working on Bitcoin now more. It was a matter of time until those particular people's opinions mattered more than a bunch of laymen with less experience and competence.