Over the next several months, the members of the World Trade Organisation will choose a new director-general to lead the organisation through the crucial end game of the Doha Round and beyond. The exercise is likely to be seen in retrospect as a missed opportunity. Although the candidates - Carlos Perez del Castillo of Uruguay, Jaya Krishna Cuttaree of Mauritius, Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa of Brazil and Pascal Lamy of France - are distinguished and able diplomats and negotiators, they lack the political stature and international standing that are requisite for leading the WTO in the future. This is true even of Mr Lamy, the brightest intellect among them. It is time for the WTO to aim higher, both in the profile of the person chosen and in the powers he or she is granted.

In a widely quoted analysis several years ago, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, the political scientists, described postwar global co-operation under the Bretton Woods agreement as a "club" model, composed of a small group of developed countries, staffed by bureaucrats, organised according to specific programme areas (trade, development, global financial flows) and characterised by closed door negotiations.* Though quite successful for four decades, steeply reducing border barriers and tariffs, the "club" model for trade contained the seeds of its own obsolescence.