Davos Diary, Day 1: The Davos Divide

It's time for me to head for the airport. I arrive in Davos tomorrow morning, and will report once or twice a day through the following weekend. Hopefully, what you find here will be the hidden side of the meeting, the part that doesn't make it into the press, with a look at whatever implications may emerge in the areas most important to the readers of FOREIGN POLICY. Remember as you read that while Davos is a gathering of world leaders, it does not necessarily reflect the real world. There is a staggering divide between the perspectives of the Davoisie and the rest of us. Admirably, it is the Forum itself, working with Gallup International*, that has underscored this point with two studies. The first, released on Monday, January 22, is called "The Voice of the Leaders" and is an annual poll of Davos participants. The second study, released a week earlier, is called "The Voice of the People" and reflects the input of 53,000 people in 60 countries. As the Forum's managing director admits:

It is clear from this survey that the leaders who will be gathering in Davos view the world and its problems in a different way than the wider global population.”

Now, I understand why some of you may not think it would take a new study to arrive at that conclusion. But the contrasting views are interesting. For example, while about two-thirds of the leaders are optimistic about the economic prospects of the next generation, it is only a minority of the "people" who feel the same way (about 40 percent). Perhaps not surprisingly, only 8 percent of the leaders feel it is a priority to "restore trust and honesty in government, in business and in international institutions." That's down from 14 percent last year, as though matters were improving. Over a third of the people, meanwhile, view business leaders as dishonest, and a similar number said they had too much power and responsibility and that they were unethical. Forty-three percent of the people say that politicians are dishonest, and over half criticize them for being too responsive to people "more powerful than themselves." The study's authors also note, in a sort of wry juxtaposition, that while about six out of ten respondents among leaders seek "greater transparency and governance," people are not so interested, with only about a third citing it. On the other hand, the popular survey saw 30 percent of respondents seeking "more punishment of fraudulent behavior by officials" while, perhaps unsurprisingly, only 7 percent of the leaders agreed. So, perhaps the place to end this opening day is to note that while some of what it is interesting about Davos is the conclusions that are reached there, equally interesting is the degree to which those conclusions connect or diverge from the views of the rest of the world—all the rest of us who are unaccustomed to the rarified altitudes of global summitry.

*Editor's note: The initial version of this post incorrectly identified the Gallup Organization as a partner of the World Economic Forum. It was actually a different entity, a loosely-affiliated network of disparate market research houses called Gallup International, that conducted the poll in question. Passport regrets the error.