ANOTHER year another Davos. Last year US Vice President Joe Biden warned that the forces of nationalism and protectionism were on the march. Few Davos predictions have been so right. Twelve months on the world is looking very different from the slopes of Davos as the rich and powerful and attendant hangers-on gathered to mull the future.
The media circus that follows what it bills as the ultimate event for the international establishment will be busy working out who is missing and who has come, but maybe not with such an extensive and expensive entourage as previous years. Some business leaders choose not turning up as a way to express their individuality and disdain for what they see as a high-priced talking shop where little in the way of real deals are really done.
This is however to ignore the core usefulness of top people actually meeting each other in a relatively informal setting, away from the set-piece presentations. All the concepts and views that will be expressed in public can be found on the Internet, but meeting the people behind them can be very informative. And indeed the apparently unguarded aside or hint at unexpected future developments can be of extraordinary importance to leaders and their aides prepared to endure the constant round of receptions and forums.
Though anti-globalization campaigners regard Davos as the ultimate expression of all that is wrong with the world, it has to be admitted that this is a unique opportunity for politics and business to meet. The United Nations is an important platform for states to speak to each other, but it has always been bound by formal procedures. Talk in the corridors of power is generally about specific issues. UN diplomats do not by and large have a brief to look at wider issues. Such mandates are guarded jealously by political leader back home who every once in a while can come to the UN General Assembly to do a bit of global grandstanding.
The G-summits have sometimes proved themselves extremely useful, not least in organizing a relatively united front in the face of the threatened economic meltdown after the US financial crash. There is certainly a chance for world leaders to get to know each other better but by and large businessmen and bankers are excluded from G-summitry.
This is where Davos comes in. When it was founded in 1971 it was called the European Management Forum and business was its primary concern. But in a brilliant change of marketing pitch, which became the envy of rival conference organizers, in 1987 it re-branded itself as the World Economic Forum. The event has since acquired a seemingly-unstoppable momentum and has arguably replaced the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as the prime meeting place for leaders of world business, finance and politics. A few years ago, an IMF official bemoaned the rising preference for central bankers to go to Davos or the more select and protected high finance meeting in Jackson Hole in the US.
This year the Davos theme is “Responsive and Responsible Leadership,” which at any other time might seem suitably anodyne. But given Trump and Brexit and the five key general elections this year in Europe, the politicians at least, can be expected to be paying close attention.
