Law Commons^™

Controlling Strategic Voting: Property Rule Or Liability Rule, Zohar Goshen

Faculty Scholarship

Strategic voting – situations where voters place their votes according to their assessment of how other voters will behave rather than according to their actual preference – results in distorted decisionmaking. Strategic voting can cause the company to lose desired transactions and can also be used to coerce voters into accepting alternatives they would have otherwise rejected. An analysis of the various types of strategic voting situations which arise in corporate law demonstrates the author's argument that strategic voting is inherent in the voting mechanism, regardless of the type of group involved or of the decision being made. Maintaining a …