DAVOS , 24 January 2004 — Davos has a rigid new dress code this year. In an attempt to give the annual Alpine gettogether a more laid-back feel, male participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) have been ordered to take off their ties, with a fine of five Swiss francs if they fail to subscribe to the groovy zeitgeist.
The funny thing is that rather than cough up a couple of quid for UNICEF, most of them have meekly complied with the order to leave their normal office uniform in the wardrobe. It’s hard to know whether the attempt at Richard Branson-style cardigan capitalism is down to simple parsimony or a strong urge to conform.
The official view is that after some tough years, the buzz is back. Share prices are up, order books are looking healthier, the war against Saddam is over. Whatever the reason, the decision to embrace the dress-down culture years after it was abandoned in financial markets around the world is rather sweet, suggesting that these hard-bitten corporate honchos ain’t so tough after all.
Not that an open-necked Davos will cut much ice with the WEF’s critics. For them, the annual confab is the time when those responsible for all the world’s ills — poverty, ill-health, environmental decay, social fragmentation — gather together in one place to plot the next phase of their plot to ensure total global domination for corporate capitalism.
For a time in the 90s, this reputation was to some extent deserved, although the degree to which business was planning for a brave new world of rule by Microsoft and Coca-Cola, let alone capable of achieving it, was always a fantasy born of watching too many Austin Powers movies. Davos was a wholly elitist event, which declined to admit those representing civil society to the charmed circle.
Times have changed, however. Trade unionists, who in the mid-90s were kept at arms length, are now on the panels. On Lyndon Johnson’s principle that it is best to have your opponents on the inside of the tent pissing out than on the outside pissing in, leaders of campaigning organizations are provided with a platform.
To be sure, the balance of participation is still heavily in favor of the men in suits (who bankroll the event and therefore subsidize the trade unionists and the anti-poverty campaigners), but the mood music has changed. There is less of the triumphalism that followed the collapse of communism, and instead a new humility influenced by the popping of the dotcom bubble, the spate of financial crises that rippled round the globe from the early 90s onward, the doubts about economic recovery built on debt and, last but not least, the growing terrorist threat.
Not so long ago, presidents and prime ministers from developing countries would make a trip to Davos where they would insist that they were following liberal economic orthodoxy to the letter in the hope that it would entice potential investors.
This year, one of the big themes of the meeting is the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, but there was not a single representative from Beijing to be seen. China’s view is that it does capitalism its own way, and that it does not need to schlep halfway round the world to beg for investment when every multinational company worth its salt is heading to the Orient with an open checkbook.
It’s not just China, however. The absence of Brazil’s President Lula is indicative of a much diminished Latin American presence, and of a general feeling in the developing world that the voice of the poor has either been marginalized or ignored.
This has had two effects, one of them positive, one negative. On the plus side, Davos now has a rival in the World Social Forum (WSF), which has been taking place this week in Bombay. The WSF has emerged post-Seattle as an attempt both to give a voice to those challenging neoliberal orthodoxy and to flesh out what the anti-globalization movement was for rather than simply what it was against. The fact that the WSF has split between those who think its purpose is to engage and those who think its purpose is to resist shows that this is proving more problematical than at first seemed likely. It is, however, wholly welcome that Davos has competition; as any successful businessman knows, there is nothing quite so unhealthy as monopoly.
The downside of all this is that the schism in the global community evident at the failed trade talks in Cancun last September — where China, India and Brazil led a group of 21 developing countries in opposing the wishes of the United States and the European Union — is as wide as ever. Davos this year represented an opportunity to get everybody talking again, but despite the wishes of the organizers to facilitate a kiss-and-make-up session, it has not happened. Nor will there be a breakthrough on meeting the development goals for 2015 agreed by all governments, nor on any of the other problems — such as the environment and migration — that cut across national boundaries.
Far from being an instrument of naked global power, a more telling criticism of Davos is that it is ineffective. There is scant evidence that globalization is about to implode, and until that day there will be the need for a forum to discuss issues of mutual importance. That could be Davos or it could be a better, more inclusive talking shop. But talking shops are only any use when governments are prepared to talk. And for now there’s not much sign that they are.
