Sir, Your editorial "The IMF should not be a European fief" and Moises Naim's article "End the Fund's succession fiasco" (March 5 - subscription required) both overlook a fundamental argument for ending Group of Seven backroom dealing and making the leadership choice at the International Monetary Fund an open and transparent process - the need to involve the big emerging markets and the poorest of the developing countries in the process. These countries are, nowadays, the only borrowers and the sole beneficiaries (or victims, depending on one's perspective) of IMF lending and policy advice.
It is odd that in an age of democracy ascendant, our system of global economic governance still mostly reflects the distribution of market and political influence from 50 years ago. It is worrying that China has fewer votes in the IMF than Italy, India fewer than Belgium, and Brazil and Korea fewer than Denmark, though it is China and the other emerging markets that now matter much more to the global financial stability the IMF is charged to protect. It is institutionally ineffectual that the 24 African countries, whose many country programmes are managed by a larger staff contingent than those of any other region, occupy only two of the 24 chairs in the IMF board that discusses and approves those programmes.
You note that the IMF's resources have dwindled relative to the growth in potentially destabilising private capital flows. That is not an accident. The developing countries are prepared to increase their commitments to the IMF's resources. But an increase has been blocked by the G-7, which is loath to trigger any discussion that would better align economic size and voting power.
The Europeans are not likely to completely give up their lock on the position this time. However, to open the process they could propose more than one candidate to the directorship, including a candidate from their own emerging markets. Imagine leadership in the hands of a distinguished Polish economic statesman such as Leszek Balcerowicz, or - even more bold - in the hands of Turkey's former economy minister and former World Bank vice-president Kemal Dervis, given that Turkey ought to join the European Union soon.
The unwillingness of the US and the G-7 to share power and responsibility in the global financial institutions is already undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of those institutions, and is reinforcing growing resistance to globalisation itself (as Rick Rowden's letter of March 9 all too amply demonstrates).
It is time for Europe and the US, in their own interests and in the interests of a better world for all, to lead an adjustment of our global institutions to the global economy's changing realities. A more open and transparent process that acknowledged the legitimate interests of the developing country borrowers, would be a nice first step.
Nancy Birdsall, President, Center for Global Development, Washington, DC 20036, US