IMAGINE if the UK government was chosen by wealth rather than vote. We would let the leader of Surrey county council, being the richest county, choose the prime minister.

That seems mad, but by analogy this is what happens at the World Bank, the largest international financial institution, whose mandate is to reduce poverty by giving grants and loans to developing countries.

The World Bank has for 66 years operated out of Washington DC under a white, male, American leader. This has contributed to the perception that the World Bank acts as an arm of US foreign policy, pushing US interests around the world. A decade into the 21st century we are still stuck with a sordid backroom deal that carves up the World Bank presidency for an American while a European takes the leadership of the International Monetary Fund.

Few people know that the stitch-up goes deeper, with an American always taking the second position at the Fund while a European is always put in charge of the World Bank’s private sector operations. No selection process for senior management in either institution has ever been conducted in an open, merit-based or transparent way, despite promises from the G20 since 2009 — ironic for an institution that lectures on good governance.

Despite being structured like an artefact of the 1940s, the World Bank remains influential, with £35bn committed last year on supposedly combating poverty. It’s no longer just a bank for funding controversial massive infrastructure projects in poor countries; the World Bank’s reach under the aegis of the US-appointed presidents has stretched from project finance to writing the legal, political and economic frameworks that define the public and private sectors in most developing countries. Rebranding itself as a ‘knowledge bank’, it even sets the tone, often with a neoliberal ideological tinge, for economic research into developing countries.

This spring we have the first somewhat competitive process for the bank presidency. With Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia, a former UN under-secretary general for economic and social affairs, and Nigeria’s current finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, nominated for the top job, we have the glimmer of a possibility of breaking the vicious cycle of US dominance. One of the biggest obstacles is the unwillingness of the American nominee, Jim Yong Kim, to engage in an open debate about his vision for the World Bank. There are four areas where the bank needs to stop domineering and start listening to the needs of poor countries and poor people.

One of the most pressing issues for the next World Bank president is recognising the emergence of new powerful countries. The bank still essentially operates on a post-Second World War power carve-up, and its most recent reforms of voting rights were remarkable only for their temerity.

While power reform is not strictly in the remit of the bank president, the new president could first acknowledge the illegitimacy of the institution’s governance and then argue for a realignment. But he or she needs to go further. — The Guardian, London