If world leaders want to protect the global order they need to start listening to people before it’s too late

Flora Holmes, The Independent

If you thought you would never find Bill Gates and Greta Thunberg in a room together, just wait till January 21 and the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The “international organisation for public-private cooperation” takes place next week in the swish Swiss ski resort of Davos, attracting 3,000 of the world’s “brightest and best” to grapple with the most pressing problems of the day.

The conversation will continue after dark at star-studded receptions, where anyone from the likes of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to Huawei founder Ren Zhengfai can be expected to show.

At a time when the world’s problems – from climate catastrophe to the collapse of the multilateral world order – seem almost insurmountable, Davos surely provides a much-needed opportunity for everyone to put their heads together and design some viable solutions.  This, sadly, is not the case. Davos is not a fertile bed for the change that so many people desire. Why? Because the people will not be there.

Those that want to attend must be invited, or pay upwards of $600,000 for “membership” of the WEF, making it little more than a meet-and-greet for CEOs to lobby their world leader of choice. But if 2019 taught us anything, it was that unless people are listened to, there will be a backlash against liberal institutions.

Protesters took to the streets the world over to demand more from their governments – a change of leadership, democratic reforms, or a reduction in the cost of living. The sheer power of people around the world showed leaders that if they don’t listen to their people, their governments will not survive.

Defenders claim the annual meeting at Davos “provides a forum in which truth can be spoken to power” and to some extent they might be right. Greta Thunberg will be there, and has promised to tell world leaders to “abandon the fossil fuel economy”. Panels held under the “Fairer Economies” theme will ask “how do we reshape economies so that growth benefits the many and not the few?”.

Aside from the irony of charging tens of thousands of pounds to attend an event titled “Fairer Economies”, the conference is entirely missing the point. People do not want change that comes from behind closed doors, from conversations that they are not well-off enough or well-known enough to be privy to. The attacks on the multilateral world order of the past few years have been borne out of a lack of transparency and democratic accountability that the process of globalisation has engendered.

Populist leaders, including Donald Trump, have tapped into this, setting a retreat from globalisation into motion. But they aren’t the cause of the collapse of the world order – they are just symptoms. “If you think Donald Trump is to blame for the issues facing liberal democracies, you’re giving him way too much credit.” said Kate Andrews, speaking at a recent British Foreign Policy Group event. “Liberal democracies are facing plenty of issues all of their own making.”

Davos is symptomatic of these issues, and illustrates Kate’s point perfectly. Aaron Horvath and Walter Powell, two Stanford sociologists, have found that when elites try to solve public problems privately, it can disrupt democracy, crowding out the public sector through private initiatives and in turn reduces its legitimacy and its efficacy, replacing “civic goals with narrower concerns about efficiency and markets”.

Indeed, the sessions at Davos focus on a move away from public solutions to private ones, like “swapping subsidies for green incentives” or “the business case for safeguarding nature”. But as the climate strikers of 2019 have shown us, people actually want large-scale, government-led action on climate change, not a reduction of it.

The multilateral world order is worth saving. Diplomacy and international forums are necessary and important in dealing with climate change, war, and other global threats. A rules-based international system facilitates public goods like trade and travel. But these forums must be transparent and accessible – and Davos is not.

If world leaders want to protect our institutions, the global order, and ultimately their own positions, they must ditch Davos and start listening to people before it’s too late.