From geopolitical strain to social fault lines, this Davos 2026 conversation highlights key causes of division and practical insights on fostering cohesion.
At Davos 2026, Scott Galloway moderated a candid discussion on the structural and informational drivers of polarization. Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte argued that Western democracies are drifting toward dysfunction because incentives no longer balance generations: aging electorates vote to protect benefits, while younger citizens participate less. The result is politics optimized for distribution and preservation, not growth, fueling “extreme” candidates and eroding the state’s ability to deliver basic public goods. Bäte also blamed a “rules gap” in the internet era, proposing tougher accountability for deliberate lying and warning that societies can’t function when people feel “entitled to everything and obliged to nothing.”
Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk reframed division as a crisis of reality. Digital spaces “overloaded with fakes, disinformation and propaganda” weaken the distinction between “lie and truth,” leaving communities without a “shared sense of reality” needed for collective action. She warned that modern authoritarians share “common narratives” designed to make democracy seem “weak and ineffective.” Her prescription combines defense and reform: “protect our democracy and perfect our democracy.” Credibility, she argued, comes not only from truthful information but from engaging citizens in concrete participation so manipulation is harder. Her closing call: “Be brave and be vocal.”
Good morning from the World Economic Forum's Davos meeting in 2026. My name is Scott Galloway. I serve on the faculty of NYU. Today we're going to be talking about why we're so divided. Welcome, everybody, and thanks for getting up so early. For this panel. I'm going to let our guests introduce themselves please.
My name is Alexandra Matvichuk. I'm a human rights lawyer, Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize laureate. We are documenting war crimes in this war which Russia has launched against Ukraine. And while this war turns people into the numbers, we are returning people their names. Because people are not numbers. And life of each person matters.
Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you for having me. My name is Oliver Beatty. I run an insurance and asset management firm called Allianz. We serve about 100 million people and lots of them trust their savings with us.
Got it. So I'll put forward some thesis and maybe have you respond to some of the reasons why we might be so divided. One, our electoral politics sort of from the very get go, create a level of extremism in government. And I don't know if this is the case in your countries, and I'd love to get your viewpoint here, but in the US, it must be amazing to be an elected leader, because I keep figuring out ways to do what's called gerrymandering, and they create hard left or hard right districts. And we have two things. We have a primary, then we have a general election. And basically the election is the primary because all regions in the US now are most of them are either hard, red extreme to the, to the right, excuse me, or extreme to the left. And essentially what we do is we send mostly crazy people to Washington who do not represent the kind of the middle three quintiles of America. So we kind of are set up to be divided by electoral politics. And that is the people. The only people who can make it to leadership positions tend to be very, very hard or extremist. I'm going to start actually, I'll start with you, Alex. Is that evident in urination as well?
No. We have the biggest problem. I think just personal opinion that we have is the way democracy fails when you have special interest groups become the majority. So just to give you a number, in 2021, 50% of the eligible electorate was electorate was over 50. And soon it's going to be 60%. So if you wonder why we went from 20% of all public spending on pensions to 40% and it's gone to 50, is that nobody is over 50 is going to vote for reducing pensions even very soon. We will not be able to afford them. So democracy must fail. It's not because people are nasty, but the structure of how balance is provided doesn't work. So the answer is because people always ask, so great, you're always amazing at describing problems and dissecting how do you solve that is a very hard thing to do. You need to ask whether my 90 year old father would should be allowed to vote on pension increases, right? So I think that's a fundamental problem because the older you get and I just turned 60. So I'm becoming part of the problem. You look 50. You think you think about.
59 and 7/8.
Yeah. Is yeah I've got some good medication. But kidding aside is and some good creams. Is that the the issue is really we need to think about the economics of democracy. And how do you make sure it fails now it's starting in Germany, in other countries that the young people, even young parliamentarians, are organizing themselves. But the reality is people over 60 vote, 90%, people under 25 only, what, 40% or less. So the young guys are not even voting, so they're not being represented. And if they vote, they often very vote for very particular interests. Right? I want to save the planet. I want to do this and that. While the old people who have all the money are very clever to unite themselves and protect. So we need to fix this and it's very hard to fix. And you see, in countries like Italy who haven't grown since 1994, after Germany, my favorite country in the world, people only talk about distribution of wealth and preservation rather than about growing it. And we need to remind humans, if you want to distribute something, you need to earn it before. Right. So again, there's a lot of problems. I think it's the number one problem for Western democracies. The US is different. I learned from you yesterday evening that you have another one in young males. We have a few of these things too. But in my personal opinion this is the number one the biggest issue we need to fix. And it percolates into anything. Why we don't innovate, why don't we don't take risks? Why don't we fix infrastructure and invest in it? Because it's good enough. It will last my lifetime. It may not last for my children. And by the way, a lot of people don't have children anymore because, you know, who wants to bring up in a world where everyone is 80 years old?
Yeah, I just want to move on in. Some old people keep voting themselves more money. So obviously, as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, you have or your organization has demonstrated an ability to bring people together. At least that's what I would argue is one of the criteria for the prizes. You're obviously dealing in a much more serious environment. It's more than just electoral politics. What are your thoughts on when you speak to somebody who is on one side or the other? Obviously it is a devastating war. What do you think is taking us further apart, and how was your organization able to quote unquote, bring, bring people together?
Let me look to the problem from another perspective.
Yep.
How we see the world define our actions and our decisions. And the problem is that people now spend more and more time in digital reality, which is overloaded with fakes, disinformation and propaganda. It's led to a situation that people start to lose their ability to make a distinction between lie and truth. They are very vulnerable to different kinds of manipulations. They live in bubbles. So what we have for current moment, generally not just I mean, in Ukraine, I mean in the globe, we have a situation when people, even from one small community, have no more a shared sense of reality, but without a shared sense of reality. These people can't do common actions without common actions. How these people will respond to global challenges or protect their their freedom and their democracy. So this is a huge problem which must be addressed.
Yeah. You're touching on something, that is cited a lot and that is our media. Unfortunately, there's a profit incentive and conflict. And moderates have a, you know, if your center left and center right, there's not a ton of conflict. But if you're far left and far right, there's a lot of conflict. And when Ted Turner figured out that that news and then Rupert Murdoch is entertainment, there's entertainment and conflict. And then so it's not a lot of fun to have a reasonable conversation. It's more fun to have very varying viewpoints.
Pregnant with let's me based on this, because we live in a world where civilizational battle between authoritarianism and democracy is going on for how the new world order will look like, will it based on human rights and freedom, or in something else, and modern authoritarian regimes, they have no common ideology. Modern authoritarian regimes have common narratives. They try to disseminate distrust between people, ruined our connections with reality, and, to convince us that authoritarianism means, strong and effective and democracy means weak and ineffective. Yeah. So what's the problem with even with people who live in well-developed democracies, this generation's inherited their freedom from their parents. They have never fight for freedom. They became consumers of democracy. They consider freedom as a possibility to make a choice between different cheeses in supermarket. Even more, they are angry and disappointed of democracy. Because democracy is not ideal, there are still a lot of problems being unresolved, for example, social inequality. And we were so confident that democracy is the final answer that we stop promoting it, that we stop promoting it. After the fall of the Berlin Wall. And nobody tell people that, yes, democracy is not ideal, but authoritarianism. And countries who have authoritarian regimes, they they don't solve these problems either. Their only difference is that citizens have no right to complain in such types of countries. So we must do two task parallel to protect our democracy and to perfect our democracy. This is our citizens obligation, and we need to have politicians who will have this honest conversation with people and to tell them about these two tasks. Because the alternative, even to our unperfect democracy, it's a hell of authoritarianism regimes.
But even within parties that mostly agree on 95%, it feels like the incentives are even within parties to be very divided and angry at each other, and that we have, unfortunately, the world's largest media companies, including many that are here talking about AI. Unfortunately, profit and revenue has been attached to conflict. There's an incentive in pitting you, the two of us very much agree on Ukraine and the danger of authoritarianism and and the incredible freedom fighters of the Ukrainian army, but there's not a lot of money in that. And so the algorithms will try and figure out a way to get us to find something we disagree on, and then fill up the comments with vile, antagonistic messaging that gets me angry and keeps me coming back, because every comment is another Nissan ad and more shareholder value. So it feels if unfortunately, our economy is tied right now to ideological conflict, where I'm going to back up and ask your younger than us, our generation. Do you think that some of it is accountability on our end? And that is we're not willing to take accountability, and that is we never actually take responsibility for anything and always want to blame someone else. That every problem we face is a function of someone else's trauma being levied on us. Is it an actual generational sociological? Is it just not Meta's fault? Is it that we inherit ideologies as our identity? And if you disagree with my politics, you're not saying you're wrong, you're saying you're wrong. But it's really it's a software problem, not a hardware problem, so to speak. Are we entitled and and so selfish and self-absorbed that we have trouble entertaining another viewpoint?
Yeah. So again, I'm a statistician. So if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So I'm going to describe it from a incentive or rules background. We have not modernized the rules of democracy to the world of the internet, social media and others. I'll give you a simple example. My personal opinion is we need to change electoral laws and say whoever is caught lying purposefully loses the right to be elected for office.
And who decides that?
Well, we need to get that through Parliament and we need to just if you if you agree and this has to be substantial and you put a court in or you put a function in, why do I think that is important? Because the point around misinformation is really huge. The second one, this is just the economic, economic, political economics view. And I can give you a few other examples of what we should do. It's very hard to do, but I think we need to do that and including holding companies accountable for that. And then you have the debate on free speech, because again, you get attention, you get votes by being extremist. And you see that in many countries, including yours. So I'm trying to be cool about it in terms of people do what they're incentivized to do. The other thing has more to do. What she was describing before that we have forgotten that democracy only works if people are engaged and take a role in it. We have become, as she described wonderfully, consumers of democracy. I had to tell my kids that 26 and 27 that a community like a soccer team doesn't work if one guy tries to shoot a goal and nine people think they have the right to get the salary. Yeah. And, you know, think about the debate of universal income and you can debate that. But it says, yeah, but I don't want to have any obligation in exchange for this. Right. We believe in many democracies. Now it's totally okay to say I want this, but I have to make no contribution. I don't have to pick up my garbage. I don't need to take care of my parents. I don't have to worry about the education. I have just entitled to everything and obliged to nothing. Have you seen any community anywhere in, the biological way in the universe where it works? That one piece only takes and the other one gives. They're called black holes, and it doesn't work. So we need to remind ourselves that communities only work if you contribute and everyone has to contribute now. Some can contribute more, others can less, and we can debate about what is the level of contribution you have to do. But we need to understand democracy does not function, in my opinion. And many people, if you don't contribute to it and it's not about paying taxes, you know, we think, you know, I pay taxes 50%, I'm done with it. And that's I think, why communities fail.
So we're talking a little bit about trying to find institutions where people believe there is an objective truth, right, that people think, okay, at some point we rally around data and something resembling an objective truth. How does your organization put out information and in what format, or what mediums or the tone such that you feel that the people who receive that information will feel this is an objective truth, that you can establish credibility?
I don't think that it's enough just to share truthful information. If we want to return people connection with the reality, we must engage them in something concrete actions. And this is what my organization is doing. For example, during the Revolution of Dignity 12 years ago, I launched civil initiative, which is called Euromaidan S.O.S. and we brought up several thousands of people throughout the country who worked 24 hours per day to provide legal and other kind of assistance to persecuted protesters. And every day, hundreds and hundreds of people who were beaten, arrested, tortured, accused in fabricated criminal cases passed through our care because it was time when millions of people in Ukraine brought up their voice against pro-Russian, authoritarian, corrupt regime. And even despite the situation that this regime has total control over informational dimension, because we engaged people directly, they know from inside what's going on, it's very difficult to create artificial reality if you are not just an observer, but active participant.
And so there's a lot of leaders here, and it appears that the marketplace was ready for. Well, back to your notion of an objective truth. I, I like the idea.
Fact.
Well.
Truth is something else that's a matter of just, you know, is the number 22 or 24. That's not so complicated.
Got it? Got it from there. Do you feel I'm trying to figure out a delicate way to put this? It feels as if there is elections to be won by being divisive. That that at least in America, and I think in the West, we got sick of leaders who were trying so hard to please so many people and get along that their rhetoric became it felt unreal. And then a set of leaders emerged in the last decade, and I'm sure and it's happened before that we're so antagonistic that it felt quote unquote, authentic. So as antagonism and maybe putting forward viewpoints that may not survive a fact check, is that the new rail politic, where that's actually how you get elected, that quite frankly, it's it's the electorate's fault that they seem so sick of this, like moderate blather, trying to please everybody, trying to acknowledge every point that they were ready for a set of leaders that, quite frankly, the truth didn't get in the way of a good story. And their anger and antagonism, which was mistaken for something that was authentic and real. Any thoughts about the rise of what I'll call? I don't know, for lack of a better term, the antagonistic leader.
That's a symptom. Sorry. I don't want to take the. I have again been looking at the facts, the problem that I think that's the symptom and it's driving it how people politicians respond because they are intelligent people. How do you get majority. But I think people are voting extreme because the outcomes are not coming. I really believe that people get angry as citizens because they get stories being told and the goods are not being delivered by the way that happens in a company, but you get fired. You can get elected on a story, and then you can blame someone else for not delivering the good. It works for four years, right? If you have an election cycle and then you can say it was my previous administration, it was the bad guys. You can blame the neighbor. In many democracies, we had a lot of problems like failing infrastructure, schools not working. Think Germany right. One of the richest countries in the world. We can't get the basics anymore done because we have highly incompetent people in many, many places. But we voted them in. It's the fault of the electorates and the sense of you don't get engaged and don't. And by the way, it's also big companies fault when we say we have 19 sickness days in Germany, which we have, which is double is because of leadership problems in how the companies are run. Right, because we're buying our way out of conflict with, awarding things that if they multiply over decades, they suddenly make you uncompetitive. So the symptom is clear. The electrics, how people get elected is clear. But the underlying problem is democracies have to deliver basic goods, public goods for people. They have to deliver safety. It has to be safe for a 17 year old girl to walk the streets of Cologne and not getting raped by someone saying, well, we have different cultural expectations. If you come from an Islamic country, it's incredible. And I'm not a rightist, I'm a left person. But you have to say the truth and then you have to deliver the goods and says safety has some requirements and, you know, public infrastructure has some requirements. We are spending more time in my home city of Munich, which is the most beautiful in the world, on building roads for bicycles than providing asking ourselves why constantly school hours are not taking place. So I think that's a symptom. But the issue is we need to focus democracy on delivering basic goods at the highest possible quality. I mean, here in Davos, we can't even organize traffic anymore. What does that shed a light on? Perfect. Switzerland. Sorry. And we have to fix these things.
These are good problems.
Good problems. They're much more basics. Yeah.
But at the end there I want to give you. We're running out of time and I want to give you an opportunity. If you could deliver a message, you know, there's some people here. There are people watching live stream. If you could deliver a message from your organization and the people of Ukraine right now with that message, be.
My message will be that we have to step in. In this civilizational battle for freedom and democracy, we are losing freedom in the world. 80% of people in the globe live in non-free or partially free societies. We saw how people who live in well-developed democracies start to exchange their freedom for something else. So we have to think, what's the world? Our children will be inherited. So my message is that we have to be brave and to be vocal about it.
Be brave and be vocal. I think that's a good place to wrap up. I take it we're not doing questions. Is that right? We're not doing questions. We're wrapping up. All right, that's it. Why are we so divided from the World Economic Forum, from the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos in 2026? Appreciate everyone getting up so early in the morning to come. Come listen to us very, very much. Appreciate our panelists and have a good rest of Davos. Thank you.
Thanks.
Yeah.