World Economic Forum - Davos Man

Davos Man

Davos Man is a neologism which refers to the global elite of wealthy men whose members view themselves as completely international. Davos is an Alpine city in eastern Switzerland which became famous in the 1990s for hosting the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of international politicians and financiers who represented a transnational elite. It is similar to the term Masters of the Universe attributed to influential financiers on Wall Street.

Davos Men supposedly see their identity as a matter of personal choice, not an accident of birth. According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who is credited with inventing the phrase "Davos Man", they are people 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 whose only useful function is to facilitate the élite's global operations". In his 2004 article "Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite", he argues that this international perspective is a minority elitist position not shared by the nationalist majority of the people.

John Fonte of the Hudson Institute has suggested that the transnational ideology of Davos Man represents a major challenge to Francis Fukuyama's assertion that liberal democracy represents the fulfillment of The End of History and the Last Man.

Hernando de Soto Polar of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy attributes a similar concept to Henri Braudel, referring to it as the "bell jar". Although internationally connected, each country's elite lives in a bell jar in the sense of being out of touch with its own populace. Their isolation fosters a tendency to be oblivious to the fate of their fellow citizens.