ABSTRACT
This chapter frames the discussion of the current activities, issues, debates and criticisms of the World Economic Forum that follow in subsequent chapters by reflecting on the unique character of the Forum and its intellectual implications for understanding contemporary global affairs. The Forum exists as an international organization in a global landscape of contemporary actors that is becoming steadily more crowded with ever more types of actors. Yet the Forum can legitimately lay claim to being unique in terms of what it is and what it does. By studying the Forum we can gain understandings of contemporary global interaction that are not readily available by studying other bodies. As was noted in the Introduction, the Forum is by its nature a boundary-crossing institution. Its boundary-crossing nature makes it an ideal vehicle for understanding, and for deconstructing, key intellectual boundaries in our understanding of global affairs: ideational vs. material causation, classical vs. contemporary diplomacy, public vs. private actors, and competing narratives of institutional identity.
