Davos: changing the world from within

Imagining a new reality

Of course, these events have not come to pass, yet. But the century is young. As the annual spectacle that is the World Economic Forum at Davos (24-28 January 2007) approaches, three trends offer a painful reminder of the fragility of today's governance of the commons for the public good:

▪ as trade negotiators shuttle between Brussels, Delhi, Sao Paolo and Washington, they try frantically to resurrect the dormant-if-not-dead Doha trade round

▪ as Iraq implodes, history may be tolling the emblematic last rites of Atlantic power

▪ as the grotesque charade of climate-change "talks" staggers onward, it may yet provide the most important, dark-horse, driver of institutional decay and rebirth.

There is no doubt of the need for radical changes in our self-governance on planet earth. Kofi Annan's lack of progress in reforming the United Nations while he was UN secretary-general (1997-2006) will not be bettered by his successor without an unlikely, radical wielding of the knife. The World Social Forum - as Patricia Daniel points out in her scene-setting piece for openDemocracy covering the parallel Nairobi event (20-25 January 2007) - embodies deep schisms behind its ebullient and energetic public face. There is little doubt too about the ill-health of the tattered institutional remnants of the 20th-century multilateral compact, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, just to name a few.

Meanwhile, across the newer generation of trans-border institutions - from trans-border institutions like Nepad and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Africa, through the maze of economic and political bodies being road-tested across Asia, to trans-regional initiatives such as the newly-minted alliance between China and Africa - the signs of dysfunction are already apparent. And the motley assortment of Chávez-led leaders and countries, from Belarus to Bolivia, offers even fewer grounds for hope.

Davos provides us with a moment to reflect on how to advance changes in global governance. Neither cynicism nor naïve optimism serve us well in this task. Sure, business is done, politics is redone and much food and drink is unnecessarily consumed. But whether or not it fits your worldview, many Davos participants are there to understand how to make the world a better place.

It may be spectacle and there is much grandstanding, but there is also seriousness and reflection and learning. The paradox of course, is that the assembled, many of the world's most powerful people, run institutions that are profoundly part of the problem:

• Bill Gates, after all, will make his mark on global affairs well away from the Microsoft that brought him money and power

• Warren Buffett, likewise, envisages his personal contribution to bettering the world as leveraging their business networks and expertise and resources, but not being about the businesses that got him there in the first place

• Bill Clinton has become a world leader, but only after he moved on from being the most powerful person on the planet.

Davos provides us with a modern Platonic vision, the most powerful citizens in dialogue about what is to be done. But more than anything, it demonstrates that the institutions we work within too often render these upstanding people helpless, despite themselves. It would be absurd, indeed irresponsible, to believe that their failure to act resulted from personality defects, some mean-spiritedness or unusual greed. The problem is far more serious: it is that these people are far too accountable for their actions!

From cynicism to realism

Yup, you read it here first: the world's problems are rooted in the fact that there is too much accountability. Or to be more precise, there is too much of the wrong kind.

We are so used to saying that "our political and business, and yes increasingly even our civil-society leaders, are in the main profoundly unaccountable". We cite, and can all recite a litany of cases - from George W. Bush and Tony Blair going to war in Iraq, to the case of the vanishing $400 billion paid for Nigerian oil, to exploding oil refineries, to abandoned criminal investigations of arms dealers and failed trade negotiations.

But trade talks will fail because of politicians' accountability to key constituencies, such as French farmers; oil refineries explode too often because of business leaders' accountability to investors obsessed with short-term returns, and Bush and Blair have shown themselves passionately accountable to, amongst others, their respective gods. We are blighted, truth be told, by too much accountability of the wrong kind.

The greatest challenge of the 21st century - and one that must be met early on - is to create a new generation of governing institutions that do not turn our leaders into very accountable parts of the problem.

I must confess to being unconvinced by the vision of a Global Council of Alliances, even one located underneath a weatherproof dome in Ulaan Bator. But I am equally convinced that incremental innovations to today's institutions are a dangerous distraction.

The key to change on the scale needed is the right people - those who can break away from the shackles of the prevailing forms of accountability, and who can imagine for and with us what it would mean to lead businesses, governments and civil-society organisations (or more probably hybrids of all three) in addressing the challenges of our time. Technology and spiritual enlightenment will help us, certainly. But the gold-seam of societal change lies in deep-rooted shifts in the accountability of our most powerful institutions; there too lies the deposit on which their leaders must be held to account.

Thus, leadership and accountability will be my focus during my week at Davos in 2007 (which includes, as in 2004, 2005, and 2006, a diary/blog from the event on openDemocracy).

We have to look for signs of leaders who are willing and able, productively, to be unaccountable within the traditional terms set out by the institutions they run, who will challenge and undermine the wrong kinds of accountability, and offer alternatives that will almost certainly upset the carefully organised apple-carts of prevailing interests. We need leaders who are prepared to bite the hands that feed them - but in smart ways that will not result in their being immediately thrown out of the temple.

Maybe some of these leaders will be at Davos - looking more or less like everyone else, but plotting very different ways of pioneering change, and very different ways of being accountable for their actions and impacts. Watch this space.