Can a publisher publish a manuscript without the authors permission?
Of course I'm not a lawyer, but I'd distinguish between two thresholds:


Before the paper can be published, you need to grant legal permission via a license or copyright transfer.  If you haven't done that yet, then the publisher can't force you to let them publish the paper.  That gives a narrow window in which you could still block publication after the paper is accepted (but whether you could ethically do so depends on your reason for objecting).
Once the published version has appeared (even just on the publisher's website), there's nothing you can do without a powerful reason.  At that point, you would be retracting a published paper, which is a far more serious act.


In between these thresholds, I don't know what would happen.  I'd guess that if you asked the publisher not to publish a paper you had already signed a copyright transfer for, then they would probably agree.  After all, publishing a paper against the author's wishes could look bad, even if they were legally entitled to do so.  However, if you didn't have a very good reason (such as a major error in the paper), then the publisher would be rather unhappy.  I wouldn't be surprised if they asked you to cover any copyediting or typesetting costs, and this sort of unprofessional behavior would be terrible for your reputation.


  Further, who has the final say on copy edits and type setting?


In principle this depends on the publishing agreement.  In practice, the ones I've seen usually give the publisher final say, but the publisher usually defers to the author about anything intellectually substantive during the proofreading stage.  (On the other hand, the author gets more or less no input into matters of style such as font choice, British vs. American spelling, etc.)