The World Bank demands transparent, meritocratic governance of those countries that seek its assistance. It has yet to apply those principles to the appointment of its own president. In 2012, emerging economies led a serious challenge to the traditional US monopoly of the appointment, fielding credible, heavyweight candidates.

Yet in the end the job went to Jim Yong Kim, the last-minute choice of the Obama administration, who had an admirable record in academia and public health, but no experience of economic development or of running such a large and complex organisation.

Four years on, the World Bank’s staff are trying to pre-empt any move to wave through Mr Kim’s reappointment for a second term. They are calling for an end to the backroom deals that, for decades, have installed an American at the head of the World Bank and a European at the International Monetary Fund; and they warn that, without reform of the process, the World Bank risks becoming an anachronism.

This level of internal discontent is troubling. The World Bank is a perennially fractious institution and its sprawling bureaucracy is undeniably in need of reform. But even by the standards of previous reorganisations, the shake-up instigated by Mr Kim has been protracted and poisonous, leading to the departure — both forced and voluntary — of many senior officials.

More worrying still is Mr Kim’s failure to redefine the Bank’s mission, and restore its relevance in a world where middle-income countries, traditionally its biggest clients, can raise finance in global capital markets or go to nimbler regional development banks. The internal shake-up was long on management fads and short on substance. Mr Kim has launched admirable initiatives, such as a $500m fund to help fight future pandemics. But this does not amount to a coherent strategy. There have also been signs of mission creep, with the World Bank engaging in crisis lending to countries hit by the commodities slump, a role that would usually be filled by the IMF.

Whatever one thinks of Mr Kim’s record in office, there is no question about the need to open up the opaque process by which he was appointed. The World Bank’s legitimacy in the eyes of the developing world has long been undermined by US dominance. This has provided a justification for China gradually to usurp its role, through bilateral lending and through sponsorship of competing institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Other international institutions are rising to the challenge, with the competition for the post of UN secretary-general opened up to scrutiny and subject to explicit diversity objectives.

The rules governing the appointment of the World Bank president are not prescriptive, so it would be entirely possible for the board to decide on a more open and meritocratic procedure. The right course would be to allow a search committee to draw up a shortlist of candidates, rather than leaving it to powerful shareholders to jump in with their own nominations. But voting weight on the board will still determine the final decision. No matter how strong the shortlist, it will make no difference if the result is still a backroom stitch-up by western countries.

The US refusal to relax its stranglehold on the World Bank presidency is understandable but short-sighted. No matter who runs the Bank, the US will remain the biggest shareholder, with immense influence. Yet if it continues to view the institution purely as an instrument of American power, it will weaken the World Bank’s shaky credibility, to its own detriment.