Those present at Davos were far from representative of the world or even of the world's elite. The World Economic Forum is an organization comprising business leaders who head the major global organizations. But many others attend the annual conference: Senior government leaders -- including several heads of state from each continent; armies of ministers, assistant ministers and minor non-ministers; officials from multinational organizations like the World Bank and United Nations; leaders of various non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International; and representatives from think-tanks. Finally, there are hordes of prestigious academics.
This does not necessarily mean a vast divergence of opinions. The World Economic Forum has an embedded ideology, developed in the 1980s and forged in the1990s. The organization believes that the business community, united and combined with these other constituencies, can dramatically improve the human condition through good will and good policies. Rising to its heights during the 1990s, it held that economics had superceded geopolitics as the driver of human events. At root, most of its members either still believe this or wish this were true. At the recent conference, it was not just the United States that was resented -- the real resentment was at the betrayal by history, and an underlying commitment to reversing that process.
This does not necessarily mean a vast divergence of opinions. The World Economic Forum has an embedded ideology, developed in the 1980s and forged in the1990s. The organization believes that the business community, united and combined with these other constituencies, can dramatically improve the human condition through good will and good policies. Rising to its heights during the 1990s, it held that economics had superceded geopolitics as the driver of human events. At root, most of its members either still believe this or wish this were true. At the recent conference, it was not just the United States that was resented -- the real resentment was at the betrayal by history, and an underlying commitment to reversing that process.