The meeting is the message

It is that time of year again, when "Davos Man" migrates to the Swiss ski resort. The meeting, organised by the World Economic Forum and held in Davos every January, is an opportunity for business and political leaders to do deals on neutral ground. It is useful for journalists too: getting stories from Davos, with its hermetic population of newsworthy people, is like shooting fish in a barrel. There is therefore a general reluctance to bite the hand that feeds you.

Caution is not misplaced: the Forum is an organisation with high self-regard and low tolerance for criticism. When the Financial Times ran a mildly pointed feature about it in January 1994, piles of the newspaper left out for Davos participants were hastily removed. This is a pity, because criticism ought to be taken as a compliment. If you are influential, not everyone will like you.

And the Davos meeting is influential-to the point of becoming a form of political shorthand. Samuel Huntington identified the species "Davos Man" in his book The Clash of Civilisations. He argued that with the end of the cold war, the west assumed that the whole world was modernising in its image, when in fact many nations were asserting themselves with different, even hostile values. Davos Man believes in market economics and democracy, but he is in danger of thinking that the whole world is like him.



The Davos phenomenon comes in for other kinds of criticism. The left, for example, questions its benign view of globalisation and its narrow view of the market-only a few pet Keynesians and trade unionists are invited to put forward the other side.

But the real problem is not that the Forum is too pro-business. The problem is that it is too politically self-important.

When Huntington's book came out, The Economist defended Davos Man as the lesser of two evils. At least he had displaced Britain's "Chatham House Man," a creature whose uncommercial Foreign Office approach focused on security rather than business issues. The advantage of Davos Man, The Economist argued, was that he cared more about making money than war, so the risk of cultural differences turning into security clashes was low.

But while the people going to Davos as participants may not be Chatham House Man, the people organising it are. Like an Escher drawing, Davos Man turns into Chatham House Man in a seamless transition. The problem is that the Forum does not allow business to be about business-it has to save the world. Companies wanting to join the Forum as members have to demonstrate "vision." Regional meetings on the middle east are not about doing deals but about cementing the peace process. Where does this end? With business becoming just another security issue.

Davos and similar meetings fulfil an important human function. Every society has a place where people can network among their peers. It used to be the local Rotary Club; now it needs to happen at the global level. If the Davos meeting did not exist, someone would have to invent it. There is nothing wrong with this. There is something wrong, however, when you believe your own propaganda and eliminate the checks and balances of criticism. As the 1994 FT article put it: "Top people keep coming because other top people keep coming." To prevent the virtuous circle reversing, everything is subordinated to one goal: keeping the top people happy.

But if keeping the top people happy is your unchecked priority, it works against the other aim-providing an open, stimulating forum for ideas and argument. Panels are packed with "names"-squeezing time for debate and socialising, often irritating even the panelists themselves. Participants from some countries are discouraged in case they offend a bigger power. Bright young Forum things trawl the world for people with useful ideas-who then get squeezed off the guest list in favour of higher-status placemen.

Hubris also affected the Forum's relations with World Link, its magazine, which I edited until last January. The magazine, a commercial venture, tackled tough issues for its sophisticated readers. But it was criticised by the not-for-profit Forum if it feared someone influential might be offended.

For example, the Forum withdrew the magazine's report on Egypt from the middle east/north Africa economic summit in 1996 because Egyptian officials complained that one photograph depicted a "slum." The Forum was angry with the magazine because President Mubarak refused to appear on a Davos platform, but also because we had "jeopardised peace in the middle east." Hubris or what?