It appeared to be a harmless call from a faintly accented man with a van in northern England. ‘I had a missed call from this number, who is it please?’ I was there when my friend answered it and, rashly but instinctively, said who he was. But, after hanging up, he checked and found he had made no missed call. The ‘man with a van’ was in fact an operative of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), interested in my friend’s contacts with figures in Pakistan’s opposition movement. After the call, various untraceable attempts were made to access my friend’s emails.

I wonder if Oxford University’s staff have had any similar calls lately, after Imran Khan – Pakistan’s jailed ex-prime minister – nominated himself to be Oxford’s chancellor. The university has taken the perhaps fateful step of globalising its own unique form of democracy, and the consequences will be interesting to see, but probably attended with more risks than the university has bargained for. Already Imran Khan’s nomination has apparently attracted legal threats from the government of Pakistan and, after he was blocked from standing, from Khan’s allies.

‘Impotence assuaged by magnificence’, is how one recent Chancellor of the University of Oxford described his role. The magnificence of robes and old stone and distinguished alumni has been sufficient, though, to attract applicants from all around the world: this 800-year-old ceremonial post, for which voting begins on 28 October, is elected by the university’s many graduates and is open to all, regardless of education or nationality.

Not so long ago, voters needed to come to Oxford wearing gowns to take part, and the candidates were British politicians, often former prime ministers. Britain just now has a proliferating set of former prime ministers, half a dozen of whom studied at Oxford, so the fact that the top applicant for the job (in political terms, at least) was a former head of Pakistan’s government is a sign of how much the university has changed. Its graduates as late as the 17th century could gather in one room. Now, 4,000 people receive their degrees every year, meaning there must be over 100,000 potential voters (26,000 have registered). Almost half of students now are from outside the UK, with the US and China providing the biggest contingents.

The 38 candidates that have been allowed to stand, and their statements of why people should vote for them, have been published by the university unfiltered. They have attracted some derisive comments on social media, some of which is deserved. One of them is all of 20 words long – impressively nonchalant perhaps, but a little on the thin side if you are asking to be the successor to the Duke of Wellington, Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury and Oliver Cromwell. Another one promises: ‘Pick me, I promise to give you anything you want, is this a bribe? Officially? No, but unofficially? Perhaps.’

And, though Imran Khan is not in fact being allowed to go forward for election, and none of the other non-British candidates are especially well-known even in their own countries, it seems inevitable that one day the Chancellor of Oxford will come from outside the United Kingdom. Bill Clinton was spoken of during the last election in 2003. The post might become like a Nobel Prize, but with a vast electorate and open campaigning, to choose the person – whether academic or politician – that the voters most want to reward and honour.

This was not necessarily what the university’s administrators intended. The system that they inherited was of ancient design, not their own. Many universities of more recent date have leaders chosen by small committees behind closed doors. Somehow or other, though, the otherwise rather undemocratic 13th century saw the evolution at Oxford of a system by which the Masters of Arts of the university elected their leader, like monks electing an abbot. Today, that results in the anomalous situation where people like me, who have little to do with the chancellor and may never even see her or him, hugely outnumber the actual academics.

The university, by making voting online, seems to want to encourage this. It removed also a previous rule that a candidate needed 50 supporters from among the university’s graduates. Instead it proposed a committee to vet applicants – and envisaged perhaps presenting voters with only one candidate.

The electorate would then have taken the role of the United Nations General Assembly when presented with a candidate for Secretary General: being able to approve but not choose. Instead, after encountering a fair bit of outrage, the idea of a committee was dropped. Unintentionally a rare thing was thus created: a democratic – perhaps too democratic – international election.

It could be a fascinating thing to watch – the next evolution coming perhaps when Cambridge elects its chancellor next year. The online voting system had better be robustly protected from hacking, though. And, Oxford staff should mind out for strange phone calls. The stakes in these elections may be higher than intended.