The World Bank’s readiness to hand ammunition to its critics has been one of its strengths. Thanks to regular evaluation reports on the impact of its projects and programmes, its mistakes are public. Even more remarkably, it also publishes an “integrity report” on instances of corruption and fraud – by borrowing governments, contractors, and the Bank’s own staff – and has banned offending companies from bidding for Bank contracts. If the UN and other development agencies were as willing to launder their soiled linen in public, it would do much to improve the quality of development aid.

By contrast, the institutional battle leading up to the resignation of its president, Paul Wolfowitz, has unnecessarily harmed the Bank, and the poor it serves.

Mr Wolfowitz made a serious error of judgment for which he has paid the price. Having properly disclosed that his long-standing relationship with a Bank employee, Shaha Riza, presented a potential conflict of interest, he should then have stayed totally out of the negotiations governing her very generously compensated secondment to the State Department. Yet, as the Bank’s board has accepted, he acted without dishonourable intent and was ambiguously, and badly, advised by Bank officials. Given that the Bank’s directors did nothing when informed of the case, there was no call for the vitriol heaped on him by sanctimonious Europeans, who overlook worse conduct in the European Commission, and by Bank staff motivated by partisan hatred of the man.

Mr Wolfowitz’s parting statement dealt with the Bank’s priorities, as he sees them. These have been to improve the quality of aid by reducing corruption, measuring lending by results not volume, which is, lamentably, a novel approach, and encouraging private sector growth; to develop a rapid response strategy for fragile states emerging from conflict; to facilitate investment in clean energy; and to rethink the Bank’s relationship with middle-income countries who stand less in need of the Bank’s loans than of its policy advice.

These are sound strategies. Yet the Bank staff association’s response was a rant declaring that he had “demeaned the Bank, insulted the staff” and “dragged this institution through the mire”. Its vendetta against him has compounded the damage. One task Mr Wolfowitz did not address yesterday was the urgent need to cut the Bank’s vast administrative costs by winnowing its bloated bureaucracy and appended army of coddled consultants. He had been much criticised for “failing” to take his staff with him along the road to reform. But a gentler management style might not have prevailed. He was up against the association’s ironclad defence of unsustainable perks and institutional intransigence.

The next president should view bringing the unreconstructed to heel as the indispensable counterpart to improving “governance” in the countries on which it lavishes advice. The Bank could then redouble its drive to promote best practice in developing economies. Were he or she to grasp that nettle, however, the next president would be unpopular within the World Bank but also celebrated throughout the rest of the world.