The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum has been around since 1971, and, while its success (and the controversies surrounding it) transformed almost all aspects of this unique private transnational organization, from its scope to its work or indeed its perception from the outside, there has been one unchanging characteristic, or rather, character, all along its trajectory through the decades: the founder Klaus Schwab. Fascinated by the role of new ideas and technology in shaping society and the wider world, he is the WEF incarnate, as the latter was intended to be – a marketplace and shaper of ideas, through its Davos gatherings and its own research. Despite all of its noble objectives, the World Economic Forum was propelled to relevancy by, and then fell victim to, the raging neoliberal consensus of the late twentieth century, as the neoliberal global elite molded the reputation of the organization instead of its actual ambitions and research output. Today, while populists and nationalists point to the Forum as a symbol of everything the West’s moral imperialism encompasses, the actual implications of the ideas behind it could also help us raise profound questions about a changing world. This chapter uses the framework of “Neomedievalism” to highlight and tentatively respond to some of these questions.