The World Economic Forum is neither as sinister as critics claim nor as lofty assupporters believe, writes DenisStaunton in Davos
In the snow-covered Swiss mountain resort of Davos this week, the rich and powerful have had an opportunity to broaden their minds at more than 200 panel discussions, many of them featuring national presidents, prime ministers and Nobel prize winners. Among the first sessions to sell out, however, was yesterday evening's "Cultural Leaders Dinner", a chance to chew over the global agenda with the likes of Richard Gere, Sharon Stone and Lionel Richie.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed about the very rich that "they are different from you and me" but the star-struck plutocrats attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week behaved just like any other bunch of adoring fans.
The celebrities, who also included actors Angelina Jolie and Carole Bouquet and musicians Peter Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour, were in Davos for a serious purpose - to draw the attention of the powerful to the plight of the sick, the poor and the dispossessed. Bono, the most politically effective entertainer of them all, described the role succinctly as he took the stage in Davos for a discussion on Africa with Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and the South African president, Thabo Mbeki.
"As a rock star and activist, my job is to bring applause when people get it right and make their lives a misery when they don't," he said.
FOR MOST OF the last century, Davos, a ski resort in eastern Switzerland with a population of 13,000, was best known as the venue of the annual Spengler Cup ice hockey tournament and as the setting for Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain.
That changed in 1971, when Klaus Schwab, a Swiss business professor, founded the WEF as a not-for-profit foundation aimed at bringing together politicians, business people and intellectuals "committed to improving the state of the world".
By the 1990s, Davos was an annual fixture in the calendar of everyone in business or politics who wanted to be in the international loop. The term "Davos Man" was applied to this elite, devout advocates of globalisation who, in their Alpine retreat, believed that the world was not only at their feet but was there to be improved by a benign alliance of business and politics.
Over the years, the WEF's meetings have brought adversaries together, helping Greece and Turkey to step back from war with the "Davos Declaration" in 1988 and facilitating an agreement on Gaza and Jericho between Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in 1994.
As the old century drew to a close, however, Davos Man came under attack from conservatives as lacking in national loyalty and from new movements critical of globalisation, which saw the Davos meeting as a vehicle for unaccountable corporations to influence governments.
The criticism from the Left stung many Davos stalwarts, particularly those who embraced the doctrine of corporate social responsibility, which encourages companies to take into account social and environmental issues as well as profits.
For many of the 2,200 participants in this year's meeting, Davos is as much a social experience as an ideological event. At about €10,000 per person (on top of an annual membership fee of about €20,000 for each participating company) it is an expensive outing. For others, the annual meeting is a unique opportunity to network with potential business partners or to bend the ear of ministers about their company's concerns.
The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, is in Davos this year for the first time, but he has no doubt about the usefulness of his visit.
"It's a very valuable opportunity for me and indeed for Ireland to network with key multinational companies and with government colleagues in Europe, the United States and across the globe from India to China. Everybody's here, so it's a unique opportunity to string together a whole range of bilateral meetings with key players, key movers and shakers in the world of business and the world of politics," he said.
BECAUSE EVERYONE IS potentially important, everyone smiles all the time just in case they are caught frowning as a key contact approaches. (This is useful for journalists: by the time they see from your badge that you don't matter at all, it's too late to avoid talking to you.) The working sessions, which examine everything from the transatlantic relationship to how young Asians define what is cool, run from breakfast until midnight. At around 6 p.m., however, most people leave the conference centre for any number of parties hosted by big companies or by individual billionaires such as Steve Forbes, whose annual bash is among the favourites.
Everybody comes together tonight for the closing gala soirée (suggested dress: black tie or national dress), which is three parties in one, with Russian, French and Egyptian themes. The closing gala was briefly abandoned a few years ago on the grounds that it gave the impression of excessive frivolity in the face of the world's troubles but it was restored by popular (or elite) demand.
The truth about Davos is that it is neither as sinister as its critics believe nor as lofty as its champions claim. Many of the sessions are valuable exchanges about important issues and some of the wealthy participants, such as Bill Gates, are generous and intelligent philanthropists.
Businesses undoubtedly use Davos to gain access to governments and to promote their own corporate agenda. The business elite is both unrepresentative and unaccountable, but even in the thin mountain air, few politicians are foolish enough to imagine otherwise. After all, most of them have to get elected.
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