On the Chinese calendar we are entering the Year of the Boar—which does not bode well for long conferences in general. But this year's Davos seemed flatter than usual, at least to most of the observers with whom I spoke. Perhaps it was the deliberate and publicized decision not to have as many movie stars. Perhaps it was the strong attendance from business leaders (900 CEOs, according to one senior forum executive with whom I spoke). Perhaps it was the fact that, at over three decades and with a finely-tuned formula designed to provide something for everyone, it is now very hard for the event to surprise. Or perhaps old hands just grow blasé at the familiar sight of Bill Gates, Tony Blair, and John McCain, or at former Iranian presidents debating with perennial American candidates like John Kerry (there's a debate certain to have no clear winner). Yes, of course, they're all here, think the inured. And no, I don't expect the politicians to tell the truth. And yes, I do expect CEOs to justify their amazingly high salaries and to blame performance problems on external factors.

Still, despite its rustic village setting, Davos is clearly not my great-grandmother's shtetl. Maybe Brangelina were not there, but Claudia Schiffer made a showing, as did the ubiquitous Bono. Most of the politicians present did not surprise, but 25 trade ministers grappling with how to save the Doha Round is no small affair. And the contrast between Brazil's Luiz Inácio da Silva ("Lula"), as he outlines a $250 billion spending plan, and Mexico's new president Felipe Calderón, who embodies the modern Latin American pro-business technocrat, offered a useful glimpse into the choices being weighed by the emerging nations of Latin America. Quirky exercises, like sessions in which a blind person led delegates around in a darkened room, were a fun diversion even if they opened the conference to the inevitable blind-leading-the-blind jokes. (more after the jump)

The Times caught Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi making a dubious distinction yesterday in Davos:

At the session, Mr. Mahdi dismissed the notion that his country is in a civil war, saying instead that it is facing “a war against civilians” that “targets the whole society.”

And here's the video clip:

Panelist Scott Friedheim

A kind of popular uprising took place yesterday during the first set of sessions here in Davos around the Forum's theme of global power shifts. Working groups were to meet to discuss different drivers in the global power structure (geopolitics, technology, etc.) and then they were to gather in a plenary to share results and formulate final conclusions. The plenary was to be augmented by wireless polling technology to add a democratic flair to this forum of the world's elites. But as the tables in the plenary stood up to review the findings, several "insurgents" said that they rejected the conclusions being offered to them. Clearly, they said, the world's greatest power-shifting force is global warming.

This left some of the people that I spoke to somewhat baffled, because while all acknowledged the importance of the issue, none felt it would reshape global power any time soon. No matter. Perhaps the insurgents own considerable waterfront property, but whatever the reason for their revolt, they succeeded in placing global warming high atop the list of drivers of change. (more after the jump)

While the early Davoisie arrivals were sipping their carbon-neutral San Pellegrino and munching on organic canapés, another conference was taking place elsewhere in the world. No, it wasn't the World Social Forum, a.k.a the anti-Davos assembly being held in Nairobi, Kenya. It was another sort of thing entirely: a seventh annual high-level Israeli security meeting in the Mediterranean resort town of Herzliya. Judging by the sound bytes I'm reading, you could call it the Bomb Iran conference. U.S. government officials as high as Gordon England and Nick Burns were in attendance. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was also there, as were his rivals John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Romney went for a strained historical analogy:

I believe that Iran's leaders and ambitions represent the greatest threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union and before that Nazi Germany."

Expect more of this over-the-top rhetoric  from both sides of the aisle. What to do about Iran is going to dominate the American debate from now until 2008, and beyond. In President Bush's speech last night, he stressed again the consequences of failure in Iraq, warning that a U.S. defeat could embolden a dangerous Iran. So it's timely that for this week's Seven Questions, FP spoke with Dr. Ali Ansari, an expert on Iran at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, about the Bush administration's policy toward that country (Iran, not Scotland). Check it out.

See also this week's List: Regime Change. It may surprise you to know that Iran makes the list of countries with tottering leaders.

Paul Pressler, former chief executive officer of Gap as of yesterday, is likely to be awarded a $14 million severance package for exiting the company. Gap, once the "epitome of preppy" with over 3,000 stores worldwide, has been in serious decline ever since Pressler assumed the CEO mantle in 2002. Gap's decline included a massive 53 percent drop in quarterly profits in July of last year. Admittedly, Gap's market outlook was fairly bleak due to poor designs and other low-cost competition before Pressler stepped in, but after four years of lousy performance and bad strategic decisions about the company under his leadership, the issue of a $14 million payout should raise an eyebrow or two.

This news comes as world economic leaders and interested members of the public prepare to discuss top management pay at Davos in Thursday's Open Forum. Executive pay has been a hotly contested issue recently, as estimates claim that CEOs are now making at least 431 times more than the average worker. While some analysts argue that the pay scales of executive managers have only risen in line with the market, others believe that company profits need to be distributed more evenly. Less controversial, though, is the idea that pay should be linked to performance. Here's French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy:

[B]ig salaries do not shock me on condition that they are associated with real risk. To take an example, Patrick Kron, who has turned Alstom around, deserves a big salary. His predecessor did not deserve a golden parachute."

Let's see whether Davos, where the, er, "gap" between business leaders and the rest of us is starkly evident, can shed some light on the debate.

It's time for me to head for the airport. I arrive in Davos tomorrow morning, and will report once or twice a day through the following weekend. Hopefully, what you find here will be the hidden side of the meeting, the part that doesn't make it into the press, with a look at whatever implications may emerge in the areas most important to the readers of FOREIGN POLICY. Remember as you read that while Davos is a gathering of world leaders, it does not necessarily reflect the real world. There is a staggering divide between the perspectives of the Davoisie and the rest of us. Admirably, it is the Forum itself, working with Gallup International*, that has underscored this point with two studies. The first, released on Monday, January 22, is called "The Voice of the Leaders" and is an annual poll of Davos participants. The second study, released a week earlier, is called "The Voice of the People" and reflects the input of 53,000 people in 60 countries. As the Forum's managing director admits:

It is clear from this survey that the leaders who will be gathering in Davos view the world and its problems in a different way than the wider global population.”

Now, I understand why some of you may not think it would take a new study to arrive at that conclusion. But the contrasting views are interesting. For example, while about two-thirds of the leaders are optimistic about the economic prospects of the next generation, it is only a minority of the "people" who feel the same way (about 40 percent). Perhaps not surprisingly, only 8 percent of the leaders feel it is a priority to "restore trust and honesty in government, in business and in international institutions." That's down from 14 percent last year, as though matters were improving. Over a third of the people, meanwhile, view business leaders as dishonest, and a similar number said they had too much power and responsibility and that they were unethical. Forty-three percent of the people say that politicians are dishonest, and over half criticize them for being too responsive to people "more powerful than themselves." The study's authors also note, in a sort of wry juxtaposition, that while about six out of ten respondents among leaders seek "greater transparency and governance," people are not so interested, with only about a third citing it. On the other hand, the popular survey saw 30 percent of respondents seeking "more punishment of fraudulent behavior by officials" while, perhaps unsurprisingly, only 7 percent of the leaders agreed. So, perhaps the place to end this opening day is to note that while some of what it is interesting about Davos is the conclusions that are reached there, equally interesting is the degree to which those conclusions connect or diverge from the views of the rest of the world—all the rest of us who are unaccustomed to the rarified altitudes of global summitry.

*Editor's note: The initial version of this post incorrectly identified the Gallup Organization as a partner of the World Economic Forum. It was actually a different entity, a loosely-affiliated network of disparate market research houses called Gallup International, that conducted the poll in question. Passport regrets the error.

The theme for this year's Annual Meeting is "Shaping the Global Agenda, the Shifting Power Equation." According to the Forum:

Over the course of the five-day Meeting, 2,400 participants from 90 countries will convene in Davos, including 24 heads of state or government, 85 cabinet ministers, along with religious leaders, media leaders and heads of non-governmental organizations. Around 50% of the participants are business leaders drawn principally from the Forum's members [....] The programme will follow four main themes that are high on the global agenda in 2007. These range from "Economics: New Drivers" and "Geopolitics: The Need for Fresh Mandates" to "Business: Leading in a Connected World", and "Technology and Society: Identity, Community and Networks".

ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP

Of course, the real meat of each Annual Meeting typically lies outside the official program, which sounds roughly the same every year given the obligation to cover hundreds of issues in a way that is offensive to none of over 80 organizations cited as sponsors or supporters of the event. Rather, the substance comes less from the big speeches than it does from the buzz in the corridors of the main Congress Hall and the scores of receptions that take place each night in the character-less hotels of Davos.

Inevitably, a considerable component of this year's side meetings will focus on the following issues: the situation in Iraq, the fate of a unipolar world when the one superpower seems to be bent on self-destruction, the absence of Bill Clinton and Angelina Jolie (two of last year's stars), the absence of a big contingent from China and what that may portend about the future of Davos, the presence of a large delegation from India, what to wear to the Malaysian-themed black-tie gala, what top speakers like Angela Merkel, Tony Blair, Mahmoud Abbas, Bill Gates, Lakshmi Mittal, and others might say or not say, and—above all—on the deals large and small that will be cut in silence. Davos is mostly about what is not on the official program, not covered in the papers. It's not a breeding ground for conspiracies per se, but rather a place where self-interests come to mate in their native habitat of low lighting and high cholesterol. As FP's anthroblogologist for this expedition, I'll try to get up close and recount some of their mating behaviors without scaring off any of the subjects.