The big changes in the proxy landscape from last year, says McGurn, are measures to allow the calling of special meetings and to require more diversity on boards of directors (currently 11 proposals). New this year are proxy measures that would bar CEOs from sitting on compensation committees.

“So-called 'say-on-pay' measures are passing pretty frequently,” says Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who researches shareholder activism. One reason, he says, is that large institutional investors, including labor union and public employee pension funds, are taking a more activist stance on governance issues.

Bainbridge predicts that as early as next year, these groups could begin focusing on another area: demanding shareholder say over corporate political contributions. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 60 years of precedent and restrictions imposed by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and declared that corporations (and labor unions) have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

“I suspect that many of the large institutional investors could start demanding that they have a say over how that money is spent,” says Bainbridge, adding that such measures are not likely to show up until next year.