We are increasingly entering a world where gatherings such as Davos are not laughable billionaire playgrounds, but rather the future of global governance. Article by.
Disclaimer For many years, TNI has offered extensive analysis of undue corporate influence on public policy. We have scrutinized gatherings such as the World Economic Forum, where business elites have proposed new and undemocratic models of global governance. Many of these claims are either made up, exaggerated or completely unsubstantiated. Moreover these distorted misinterpretations of our analyses are designed not to rein in corporate power, but to fuel reactionary movements driven by hate, distrust and disinformation.
They provide no answers to the crises we face. TNI believes that we are confronted by multiple crises of poverty, inequality, racism and ecological breakdown and that these require transnational and systemic solutions. This requires effective public policy, rooted in rigorous evidence-based science and social research as well as unprecedented global cooperation. The answer to undue corporate influence on policy making is not to ditch public policy, nor to indulge in disempowering and often racist narratives of conspiracies, but to demand that corporations are excluded from public decision-making and to build democratic accountability in all our institutions.
The answer is to mobilise to build a more just society that works for everyone, and not just a small few. This year will be no different. The real concern about the WEF, however, is not the personal hypocrisy of its privileged delegates. It is rather that this unaccountable invitation-only gathering is increasingly where global decisions are being taken and moreover is becoming the default form of global governance.
There is considerable evidence that past WEFs have stimulated free trade agreements such as NAFTA as well helped rein in regulation of Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Less well known is the fact that WEF since has been working on an ambitious project called the Global Redesign Initiative , GRI , which effectively proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance.
