ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the principal types of criticisms of the World Economic Forum, by whom they have been made, and how the Forum has responded. The story that emerges is one of learning and adaptation, both by the Forum and by its critics, and of fluid and shifting boundaries between those driving the Forum’s agenda and those seeking to change it. The actual narrative of the Forum’s engagement with its critics challenges the oppositionalism constructed by those who embrace the “Shar-pei” and “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” narratives of the Forum’s evolution. This story sets the Forum somewhat apart from large multilateral economic institutions such as the WTO, World Bank and IMF, which have had more fixed boundaries and identities that are tied more directly to economic policies that tend to engender clearly staked out ideological opposition.
