Power imbalances often coincide with informational asymmetries. For example, in many corporate boards, the CEO often serves as the chair, holding more power than other board members. The CEO typically has access to more comprehensive and real-time information, giving them also an informational edge. Other examples include the FED chair who is the chair of the FOMC, the president of the ECB also chairs the ECB governing council, the president of the FIFA is leading the FIFA council, or permanent members of the UN security council who have more power due to their veto-vote and more access to intelligence and diplomatic channels. How do power imbalances and informational asymmetries interact? Does having an informational advantage amplify or stifle power imbalances? This paper addresses these questions through a strategic voting model and an experimental study of a committee where a chair holds tie-breaking power, and regular members have incomplete information about the chair's preferences.

We derive Bayesian Nash equilibria to investigate how uncertainty about the chair’s type affects the power to implement the preferred alternative. In contrast to the well-known chair's paradox under complete information (Farquharson, 1969), which leads to the least preferred outcome for the chair, we show that under incomplete information there are also equilibria in which the chair's most preferred outcomes is implemented by the committee. We test the equilibrium predictions of the model in a laboratory experiment and find that both individual behavior and voting outcomes closely match the theory. Our findings confirm that members' beliefs about the chair’s preferences are crucial in determining whether the chair can use the tie-breaking power to influence outcomes. In addition, we investigate key assumptions about equilibrium voting behavior and show that participants with higher strategic sophistication, are more likely to vote optimally.