Delegates to the World Economic Forum felt under siege this year. Elections keep going against their vision of a borderless world, and it unsettles them.
Not that you’d have guessed it as they networked and namedropped. Whether he is a politician, a lobbyist or a government relations schmoozer, Davos Man knows how to act the part. I am always reminded of Ayn Rand’s description of a company board: “Men whose careers depended on keeping their faces bland, their remarks inconclusive and their clothes immaculate.”
Yet, in their self-referential conversations, the delegates couldn’t wholly avoid the awkward topic of how voters have come to loathe them. Some years ago, Samuel Huntington remarked that the Davos attendees “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 elite’s global operations.”
Well, over the past 12 months, those national governments have made a comeback. Border posts are being reactivated all over Europe. Supra-nationalism has been rejected by the American and British electorates, with others set to follow. It fell to President Xi Jinping of China, who has no voters to worry about, to mount an argument for globalisation.
The public has good reason to resent Davos Man. His corporatist ideology has undermined the West’s economic strength. The bank bailouts saw a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. The countries that joined the euro (Davos Man’s favorite project) have barely grown in a decade. Although Davos Man’s own income soared during that time — I keep saying Davos Man, though Davos Woman can also be found stalking the corridors in her sharp pantsuit — that of the average Western worker stagnated.
What is the answer to the populism that has swept Europe and the United States? Are angry nativism and corporatist technocracy the only two alternatives? No. A better answer surrounds the delegates, if only they would open their eyes. Switzerland, the country where they are meeting, is the world’s outstanding exemplar of how to disarm populist anger through direct democracy.
I have always loved Switzerland: its polite people, its snowy slopes, its regular referendums, its devolved decision-making, its entrenched Euroskepticism. I even have a soft spot for Davos, where I sometimes go skiing with Swiss members of parliament.
I am a Helvetophile for many of the same reasons as America’s Founders. James Madison was fascinated by the way Switzerland had “no concentered authority, the Diets being only a Congress of Delegates from some or all of the Cantons.” John Adams believed that such a system bred brilliance: “It is not at all surprising, among so much freedom, though among rocks and herds, to hear of literature, and men of letters who are a ornament to their country.” George Mason was entranced by the militia system: “Every Husbandman will be quickly converted into a Soldier, when he knows & feels that he is to fight for his own. It is this which preserves the Freedom and Independence of the Swiss Cantons, in the midst of the most powerful Nations.”
It still does. Now, as then, Switzerland has stubbornly retained its sovereignty, despite being surrounded by the EU. Most of those Swiss MPs I ski with secretly yearn to join, but their constituents keep voting against it in referendums.
Swiss democracy is direct, decentralized and devolved. Most fiscal decisions are taken locally. Result? Swiss voters are the happiest in Europe, their economy is the freest, and their state budget the smallest. The Legatum Institute ranks the Swiss as the wealthiest people in the world, and the UN says they have the third highest quality of life (after Norway and Australia).
It turns out that the way to combat populism is with more democracy, not less. The more responsibility voters are given, the more responsibly they behave.
The Founders instinctively grasped that notion, and would be distressed by the extent to which power in the United States has now shifted from the 50 states to Washington and from the citizen to the government. But they’d recognize Switzerland as being the same ornery, freedom-loving country they admired in their own day.
How aptly Patrick Henry’s words still apply. “Those virtuous and simple people have not a mighty and splendid President nor expensive navies and armies to support. No, Sir, those brave republicans have acquired their reputation no less by their undaunted intrepidity, than by the wisdom of their frugal and economical policy. Let us follow their example, and be equally happy.”
Good advice, America. It’s not too late to take it.
Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.
