Is Davos still worthwhile?

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“Davos Man” and “Davos Woman” do not strut quite so confidently these days. The conference-attending tribe were identified by the political scientist Samuel Huntingdon in 2004 as a global elite who “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past”. How times have changed.

As some 300 public figures and 1,600 business leaders gather for the World Economic Forum’s 54th annual alpine rendezvous this week, its globalist raison d’être is in retreat. National fealty is in vogue. Borders are no longer considered obstacles but protection — at least by some. The big state is no longer an anachronism. So what is the point of Davos now?

Some will contend that the breakdown of the “Davos consensus” makes it even more important to bring together global political and business leaders. The threats to world stability are multiplying, with wars raging in Gaza and Ukraine and Donald Trump seeking a return to the White House.

Yet Davos can often become an echo chamber. There is a risk that some delegates end up leaving the event with their beliefs reinforced. The forum can at times feel like a rant among like-minded individuals who are struggling to come to terms with a changing reality.

Davos’s strength has never really been in its ability to proffer solutions to the world’s problems anyway. For every panel and speech that imparts insight, there is likely to be another with platitudes and experts talking vaguely about “megatrends” — as is true of many global conferences. Indeed, the forum’s lofty ambitions often distract from the true purpose of the event: its unmatched power as a giant networking opportunity.

When Klaus Schwab founded the event in 1971, it was called the European Management Forum. The inaugural…