World Economic Forum: Origins And Development (1971-2007)

From the perspective of global governance, this paper hopes to explain the constructive process of the World Economic Forum using globalization theory and the theory of global governance, reflect its relationship with the economic globalization and the mechanisms of global governance, summarize annual meetings of the World Economic Forum, review of its main activities, find the trace of its development. On this basis, analyze the impact of its World Economic Forum, and the role of World Economic Forum in global governance and its limitations.It is divided into five chapters totally in addition to the Introduction and Conclusion. The section of instruction describes the significance of the topic, international and domestic dynamics of the topic and the research resources.The first chapter "Coming of the era of economic globalization," tells us how to the World Economic Forum has been established and its background of development. In the context of economical globalization, the growing global problems afflicting humankind has passed the perspective of the nation-state governance capacity. Any government is difficult to deal with its own problem alone, such as security, economic stability, social justice and social order, and eco-environmental protection, global issues etc. Global governance needs the cooperation and coordination of inter-State. It will undoubtedly bear the primary responsibility that formatting a global governance mechanism, making national and inter-governmental international organizations. However, the historical process of globalization is not only manifested in acts of states, the major driving force of contemporary economic globalization, does not come from the country, but from the economic behavior of non-governmental body, which represented the multinational companies. In order to make non-governmental organizations involved in the discussion and study of global issues, the World Economic Forum came into being, with the background of calling on global issues of the mechanism of global governance.The second chapter, "The Origin of the World Economic Forum," briefly introduce the founder of World Economic Forum—Professor Klaus Schwab, his experience of researching and the development and evolution of the World Economic Forum. It plays a very important role to its creation of the European Management Forum that the childhood memories of Klaus Schwab as well as its experience of school and work in his youth. Through the view of development of the World Economic Forum, we can see clearly how to grow into a global problem-solving structure and governance of multi-stakeholder platform for the exchange institution the World Economic Forum from one organization, to meet the needs of European companies.Chapter III, "World Economic Forum: the activities of the organizational structure and its mechanism " analyze the organization of World Economic Forum, the structure and activities of the mechanism. The first part is about the organizational structure of the Forum, which is led by the Foundation Board of Directors and its members from business, politics, multilateral economic organizations, academia and civil society leaders. Management Committee is the executing agency for the Foundation. Management Committee comprises members from different parts of the world, with different professional backgrounds. The second part of this chapter analyzes the activities of the Forum mechanism: participatory mechanisms, financing mechanisms and public information functions. A major participant in the form of the Forum is members and partners. The special mechanism for gathering funding is essential for its independence of World Economic Forum.Chapter IV, "The main activities of the World Economic Forum," it describes the theme of the annual meetings of World Economic Forum, reviewed of important issues which was discussed by the participants and evaluates "Global Competitiveness Report" and the "Global Information Technology Report". By this way, we can see that these themes are related to the times, from them we can learn changes of situation in the world economic.The final Chapter, "Impacts of the World Economic Forum," shows praise, criticism and protests of World Economic Forum. About the praise, it can be divided in three areas: expanding the size, the increasing importance and been emulated by other forum. Critics and protesters can be divided into two categories: First, They questioned their existence of World Economic Forum, its mission and their mode of operation, from the "existential" level; the second from the " instrumental "level, they critics, that the forum don't do what it intends to do, and it may do or should do.