WEF meets at potential historical crossroads

THE 2015 World Economic Forum (WEF) begins on Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland. The event has become a premier annual global forum for political and business leaders with scores of presidents, prime ministers and senior executives in attendance. The key theme of this year's summit is what WEF calls a "new global context" for decision-making. Participants will debate whether the complexity, fragility and uncertainty of the contemporary world mean that, in effect, we live in a new era of profound and disruptive "political, economic, social and technological transformations".

On the political and economic fronts, the last few years have certainly witnessed a remarkable period of fragility and uncertainty driven, in part, by the impact of the post-2008 international financial crisis. Perhaps most eye-catching has been the political revolutions, popular uprisings and protests in emerging markets. This spans last year's change of power in Ukraine, and the huge demonstrations in Brazil. And, of course, the remarkable developments since 2010 in North Africa and the Middle East, often called the "Arab Spring", including the civil war in Syria; revolutionary changes of power in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya; transfer of power in Yemen; plus demonstrations and uprisings in Turkey, Iran, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Oman.

However, political instability has not been restricted to emerging markets. Many governments in the developed world have been voted out of office, in part, because of economic downturn and/or austerity measures. In Europe alone, millions have taken to the streets and administrations in more than half of the 27 European Union (EU) states fell or were voted out of office from spring 2010 to 2012 alone. Within the core eurozone, 11 of 14 governments collapsed or lost elections during that same two years.