Donald Trump's election has 'cast a long shadow' over the Davos International summit as world leaders prepare to discuss the rise in 'populist' leaders.

Critics often accuse the yearly World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps of being a snow-covered playground for well-heeled business and political elites.

But founder Klaus Schwab said this year's event, which opens Monday before a public start Tuesday, is reaching out to populist politicians who have ridden a wave of discontent among the masses.

'It's important to listen to the populists, and actually we have several sessions where we deal with these issues, and we have representatives of populist parties here with us,' Schwab said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press. 'We have to take it (populism) seriously.'

President and Founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, in Davos, Switzerland where business and world leaders are gathering for the annual meeting

For a forum that strives to take the pulse of the world each year and produce 'a real hub of a global discussion,' Schwab said 'it would be soundly unrealistic and far from realities if we did not integrate the concerns of populists very much into our own deliberation.'

The annual conclave of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps, grouping 3,000 delegates from the worlds of government, business, science and the arts, has created the caricature of 'Davos Man', a rich, rootless globetrotter who worships with fellow disciples in the church of free trade.

But this year, leaders say that Trump's election has led to uncertainty over the future, and one of the major topics of discussion this year will be whether leaders can agree on the root causes of public anger and begin to articulate a response.

'Regardless of how you view Trump and his positions, his election has led to a deep, deep sense of uncertainty and that will cast a long shadow over Davos,' said Jean-Marie Guehenno, CEO of International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution think-tank.

Moises Naim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was even more blunt: 'There is a consensus that something huge is going on, global and in many respects unprecedented. But we don't know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it.'

Staff members are briefed at the congress center where the annual meeting, World Economic Forum, will take place

A WEF report on global risks released before Davos highlighted 'diminishing public trust in institutions' and noted that rebuilding faith in the political process and leaders would be a 'difficult task'.

The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple explanations and solutions.

The problem, says Ian Goldin, an expert on globalization and development at the University of Oxford, is that on many of the most important issues, from climate change to financial regulation, only multilateral cooperation can deliver results. And this is precisely what the populists reject.

'The state of global politics is worse than it's been in a long time,' said Goldin. 'At a time when we need more coordination to tackle issues like climate change and other systemic risks, we are getting more and more insular.'

For this 47th Davos conference, a record turnout of some 3,000 people will gather around the theme of 'Responsive and Responsible Leadership,' alluding to the challenge of wise decision-making during a time of populist fervor.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first Chinese head of state ever to attend the forum, is perhaps the standout among 46 heads of state expected to be on hand. Xi's visit to Davos during an official visit to Switzerland is important, Schwab said, because it shows how the world is moving from a 'unipolar to a multipolar world.'

Swiss police officers walk inside the area of the congress center where the annual meeting will take place in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday

His presence is being seen as a sign of Beijing's growing weight in the world at a time when Trump is promising a more insular, 'America first' approach and Europe is pre-occupied with its own troubles, from Brexit to terrorism.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who has the thorny task of taking her country out of the EU, will also be there. But Germany's Angela Merkel, a Davos regular whose reputation for steady, principled leadership would have fit well with the WEF's main theme of 'Responsive and Responsible Leadership', will not.

As for the United States, the incoming Trump administration will be represented by adviser Anthony Scaramucci, a financier who has attended Davos in the past. Schwab said WEF organizers knew Trump wouldn't attend this year because his inauguration Friday is on the conference's last day.

Trump has never attended the forum 'and I'm looking forward to having him here, and having him expressing his ideas,' Schwab said. 'I hope he will join us. I cannot predict that, it depends very much on the future of the politics of the U.S. administration.'

At the Swiss ski resort itself, snow blowers were out, setup crews were drilling their last rivets and audiovisual technicians were putting the final touches on big screens set to welcome glitterati like Matt Damon, will.i.am and Forest Whitaker. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry will also be attending the forum at the nearly mile-high Alpine village.

A man walks past the congress center with his skies where the annual meeting, World Economic Forum, will take place in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday

A worker uses a snow blower to clear the area in front of the congress center

Rightly or wrongly, Davos has become one of the most potent symbols of a growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots since the global financial crisis of 2008.

Trump's election in November, Britain's June vote to leave the European Union and rising populist movements from Poland to the Philippines testify to a rising disgruntlement with ruling elites seen as detached from the people.

'This is among the most important meeting in the WEF's history because business has to take up the challenges that exist in a populist world,' Richard Edelman, president and CEO of the Edelman marketing firm, told the AP.

Edelman said social and economic fears have been 'allowed to fester' — and businesses are best-placed to address them 'by paying their employees fairly, talking with, and empowering their employees.'

John Drzik, president of the global insurance and risk management firm Marsh, said Davos can be useful if it helps to identify and address problems.

'Probably the most positive thing is that there is a collective recognition of something,' he said. 'People who are there certainly have the power to lead, and can shift course.'

The mood is anything but celebratory.

Schwab speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday

Beneath the veneer of optimism over the economic outlook lurks acute anxiety about an increasingly toxic political climate and a deep sense of uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on the final day of the forum.

Last year, the consensus here was that Trump had no chance of being elected. His victory, less than half a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, was a slap at the principles that elites in Davos have long held dear, from globalization and free trade to multilateralism.

Trump is the poster child for a new strain of populism that is spreading across the developed world and threatening the post-war liberal democratic order. With elections looming in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and possibly Italy, this year, the nervousness among Davos attendees is palpable.

The titles of the discussion panels at the WEF, which runs from Jan. 17-20, evoke the unsettling new landscape. Among them are 'Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle Class Crisis', 'Politics of Fear or Rebellion of the Forgotten?', 'Tolerance at the Tipping Point?' and 'The Post-EU Era'.

Guy Standing, the author of several books on the new 'precariat', a class of people who lack job security and reliable earnings, believes more people are coming around to the idea that free-market capitalism needs to be overhauled, including those that have benefited most from it.

'The mainstream corporate types don't want Trump and far-right authoritarians,' said Standing, who has been invited to Davos for the first time. 'They want a sustainable global economy in which they can do business. More and more of them are sensible enough to realize that they have overreached.'

But Ian Bremmer, president of U.S.-based political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, is not so sure.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trump Tower on January 11

He recounted a recent trip to Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York where he saw bankers 'rejoicing in the elevators' at the surge in stock markets and the prospect of tax cuts and deregulation under Trump. Both Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his JP Morgan counterpart Jamie Dimon will be in Davos.

'If you want to find people who are going to rally together and say capitalism is fundamentally broken, Davos is not the place to go,' Bremmer said.

Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), believes a 'modern version of globalization' is possible but acknowledges it will take time to emerge.

'It is going to be a long haul in persuading a lot of people that there is a different approach. But you don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water,' he told Reuters.

Still, some attendees worry that the pace of technological change and the integrated, complex nature of the global economy have made it more difficult for leaders to shape and control events, let alone reconfigure the global system.

The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple explanations and solutions.

The problem, says Ian Goldin, an expert on globalization and development at the University of Oxford, is that on many of the most important issues, from climate change to financial regulation, only multilateral cooperation can deliver results. And this is precisely what the populists reject.

'The state of global politics is worse than it's been in a long time,' said Goldin. 'At a time when we need more coordination to tackle issues like climate change and other systemic risks, we are getting more and more insular.'