CHICAGO — When Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, was appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund in 2007, many developing countries objected — not to him, but to the tradition that gave the IMF's top job to a European, with the Americans installing one of their own at the World Bank.
This antiquated international spoils system is a leftover of the post-World War II order, in which the victorious powers divided the leading positions in the world economic institutions among themselves.
That arrangement made some sense when the United States represented 35 percent of the world economy and Western Europe another 26 percent, but today, the balance of economic power has shifted. The U.S. accounts for only 20 percent of the world economy, and Western Europe for 19 percent.