Repackaging growth at Davos: the World Economic Forum’s inclusive growth and development approach

Abstract

This article takes stock of the inclusive growth and development (IGD) project of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Deploying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methods, it examines the WEF’s Inclusive Growth and Development Report and shows how this project reproduces growth as the cure for many of capitalism’s ills and the only path toward an inclusive and sustainable development model. I argue that the IGD agenda represents a pre-emptive attempt aimed at re-legitimating neoliberal capitalism, and the WEF’s place within it, and consolidating the growth ideology against competing narratives, especially those calling for non-market solutions to the socio-ecological challenges of the current growth model. However, the analysis demonstrates that the IGD project faces three major limitations, curtailing its ability to produce sustainable inclusive growth and development. First, the policies prescribed in the IGD framework remain largely neoliberal, repackaged in the language of social inclusion. Second, evidence suggests that these policies often fail to produce more social inclusion. Third, the IGD project lacks serious consideration for the ecological limits to growth. Yet, as a global public-private hub, the WEF can leverage its IGD project to keep governments and societies committed to the idea that more growth is the answer to social exclusion.

Keywords:

• Competitiveness
• global governance
• inclusive growth
• neoliberalism
• sustainable development
• World Economic Forum

Acknowledgement

The initial version of this article was presented at the workshop ‘Post-Growth in World Politics: Exploring the Strange within the Familiar’ organized by the European International Studies Association, in July 2020. I would like to thank all the participants for the insightful discussion which helped to clarify my thinking. I would also like to especially thank Matthias Kranke, John Barry, Juliette Schawk, Diego Giannone, and the three anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments and recommendations on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Saqer

Ali Saqer is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at ADA University, Baku. His broader interests lie in the global governance of sustainable development. He is currently writing a research monograph entitled Making the Competitiveness Agenda of the State (contracted with Routledge RIPE series) which aims to provide a comparative analysis of the domestic politics of benchmarking and the making of public policy in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands.