How Powerful are Transnational Elite Clubs? The Social Myth of the World Economic Forum

Policy forums: Why do they exist and what are they used for?

“…Another example of asymmetric exchange is a forum designed to foster exchange between scientists/experts, politicians, companies, journalists, and celebrities, like the World Economic Forum (Graz 2003). In this case, different resources are exchanged: scientists lend their expertise and credibility to the forum and gain visibility and reputation in return; politicians offer legitimacy as an "official" series of events and access to decision making institutions, and they gain visibility, new contacts, policy advice, and the ability to send signals to other politicians; companies sponsor the forum with their money for a better image as well as contacts to politicians and thus access to decision makers; celebrities help to transport other participants' messages to a wider audience and are able to polish their own charity image by being included in the forum; and journalists exchange their time and a medium for transporting the other participants' messages for news stories they can sell.…”

Decline of the Corporate Community : Network Dynamics of the Dutch Business Elite

“…These meetings differ from, for instance, the World Economic Forum, organised annually in Davos. The explicit aim of the WEF is to influence and legitimise public policies, and it does so in a relatively transparent way (Graz 2003). In a study on the intertwinement of global-oriented elite policy groups and firms, Carroll and Carson (2003) find that a few dozen cosmopolitans, mainly based in Europe and North America, knit the corporate policy network together.…”

Conferencing the international at the World Pacifist Meeting, 1949

“…To date, the study of conferences has remained largely contained to those of the highest order, exemplified by the term 'summitry' (Constantinou, 1998;Reynolds, 2009). Recent attention has addressed how our modern globalised world is shaped by the likes of G20 meetings (Cooper, 2010), Climate Change Summits (Mintzer and Leonard, 1994;Giorgetti, 1999;Death 2011a) and World Economic Forums (Graz, 2003), with places like Davos and Kyoto holding widespread register.…”