Michel Camdessus has wisely recognised that the International Monetary Fund needs a renewal of vision and leadership.

The cognoscenti of the world financial system expect his successor as managing director to emerge from the backroom poker game of European politics, as has always happened in the past. Will it be a German this time instead of Frenchmen, they wonder breathlessly.

In the meantime, the developing world - 85 per cent of the world's population and nearly 100 per cent of the receiving end of IMF policies - is expected to stand by and wait for the result. This is no way for a global institution that preaches transparency, good governance and democracy to function.

The position of IMF managing director is one of the most important in the world. The IMF, wrongly I would assert, now has programmes in more than 50 countries, and is negotiating with at least a dozen more. Hundreds of millions of people depend on the quality of IMF leadership. In truth, they often depend more on IMF leadership than on their own political leaders, so intrusive has the IMF become in the weak and vulnerable nations of the world.

Yet the IMF's legitimacy is dangerously low. It is already the object of riots and unrest throughout the developing world, as well as scorn in the US Congress and even in much of the financial world. There is little chance of regaining global legitimacy if the developing countries have no role in the selection of a new managing director, including the real possibility of asuccessful candidate from a developing country.

At a time when the gulf between the world's richest and poorest is the widest in history, one might expect some more serious attention to ways to improve the prospects of the poorest countries - including the appropriate roles of international institutions. And yet, with the horse-trading to fill the IMF vacancy already in train, not a word is heard in Washington or the European capitals about the developing world's role in this process. Since the US believes it owns the presidency of the World Bank (a rational belief indeed, in view of past practices), the Europeans believe they own the position of IMF managing director.

According to the IMF's articles of agreement, the managing director is to be chosen by the executive board of the IMF. The board is, of course, not a fully democratic institution, for two reasons. First, it is by design much closer to the rule of one-dollar, one-vote than one-person, one-vote. Voting power within the fund is allocated according to IMF country quotas, which in turn are allocated roughly according to economic size. India, with 16 per cent of the world's population, has just 2 per cent of the votes within the IMF.

The second problem, more discouraging and less tractable, is that many countries within the fund are themselves so undemocratic that their votes can hardly be considered representative of the aspirations of their own people.

Despite these serious shortcomings, an open campaign for the position of managing director, followed by an open vote of the executive board, is still vastly to be preferred to a backroom deal in Europe. An open process would force candidates to state their visions of the role of the fund; and, even more importantly, would force the executive board and the world community at large to focus on what the fund has been doing and what it should be doing.

The developing and post-communist economies have about 40 per cent of the IMF votes, enough to force the candidates to confront issues of interest to the poorer countries.

There are at least three distinct visions of the IMF. The US government sees it as proconsul to the developing world, the institution that dictates the terms so that laggard societies are prepared for the global economy of the 21st century.

The UK position, set out by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, has been to see the IMF as the repository of globally agreed standards in monetary, fiscal and financial policies. This is a much more collegial vision, though it raises crucial questions as to the appropriate borderline between global harmonisation and the freedom of countries to choose their own institutional forms.

A third position, espoused by a remarkably wide range of ideologies, and a view that I share, is that the IMF should stop being a nanny to the world and should focus on monitoring the world's monetary system, including exchange-rate arrangements and international capital markets. Advocates of this position see comprehensive debt cancellation as an effective way to end the need for perennial IMF programmes in the poorest countries.

The cause of good governance would therefore be served by a process of the following sort. The IMF executive board could invite candidacies from all parts of the world during the next 60 days. The board could also select an outside body of experts to review the candidates, in order to advise on professional and ethical qualifications, a standard procedure for important nominations to the US judiciary and other key positions in many parts of the world.

The outside experts would designate candidates as qualified or unqualified only in terms of professional knowledge and international leadership experience, but would not rank the nominees.

Early next year, the candidates would make public their broad positions on the IMF's role and their views on issues such as debt relief, exchange-rate arrangements, global governance and management of capital flows. One would expect them to meet groups of international civil society during the period as well. Such groups would also submit their opinions to the executive board.

By February or March, the executive board could take a public vote on the candidates, with board members explaining the reasons for the vote. The people of the world, not just finance ministers, should hear the basis of this decision.

The world is filled with promising candidates. Western Europe boasts some outstanding figures, but so do other parts of the world.

How about Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's finance minister, the most successful economic reform leader in the post-communist world? Or Manmohan Singh, India's former finance minister, who brought macroeconomic stability, market reforms and renewed economic growth to India's 1bn people?

For a crucial global institution, it is time to tap our best global talents, and to do so openly and democratically.

The author is director of the centre for international development at Harvard university Copyright Financial Times Limited 1999. All Rights Reserved.