States are not only handing over more of the economy and policy-making to corporations at national level, they are also doing so at international level. Harris Gleckman summarises the Global Redesign Initiative that has come out of the World Economic Forum and represents the best summary of corporations' vision of what they want global governance to look like. What are its principle features? What dangers does it pose to democracy?
Susan George looks back at her four decades of scholarship to explain what led her to write her different books, how it formed her vision of power and the best ways to challenge the Davos class in order to deliver a more just world.
Lobbying has long been part of the political landscape. But in recent years links between big business and government have become stronger and more far-reaching than ever.
Vice News - The World Economic Forum — the folks who organize the annual winter retreat in Davos, Switzerland, for the international elites who claim to know how the world should work — say that Qatar has the most efficient government on the planet.
Markus Giesler reports on the media reception to his eight year ethnographic and institutional study on the World Economic Forum that provides empirical evidence that Davos is not "improving the state of the world."
Economists consistently have upheld the power of elites, at times by taking their side overtly, but most often by ignoring or obscuring power, giving economics a veneer of science, in which the impact on people and the environment is hidden from public view.
Austerity in Greece and Italy has struck workers' particularly hard, but it has also been the context for radical innovations in ’organising the unorganised’, building new kinds of work spaces and even taking control of production.
How have mining transnational companies and the extractive industry become so powerful in every country, no matter the political shade. Marshall shows how the ‘promiscuously intimate’ relationship between governments and companies developed and how we might resist.
Financial speculation has not just rewarded bankers; it has played a major role in fuelling hunger, land dispossession and climate change. Yet the financial sector innovates false financial ‘solutions’ to the very problems it creates.
Many people understand how the Internet has revolutionised society, but have we really grasped the power implications? Richard Hill shows how US policy-makers have used the ad hoc ‘multi-stakeholder’ governance of the Internet for political and economic ends.
How did the financial sector succeed escaping censure and even effective regulation despite the global economic crisis? Through the case study of the proposed Financial Transaction Tax, Kalaitzake looks at how the financial sector succeeded in capturing policy and politicians and how we might challenge their power.
The fourth edition of our annual State of Power report, coinciding with the international meeting in Switzerland of what Susan George calls “the Davos class”. This series seeks to examine different dimensions of power, unmask the key holders of power in our globalised world, and identify sources of transformative counter-power.
