Conditionality has grown over the last three decades in a way probably unimaginable in the early years of development aid. Donors now have an enormous influence on policy decision making and execution in areas as disparate as democracy, judicial reform, corporate governance, health, education and environmental policy (Chang, 2005). As Robert Chambers (2005, p. 39) has noted,

“Now, to a degree that during the 1960s would have been vilified as gross neo-colonialism, in many small and low-income countries – especially in sub-Saharan Africa – lenders and donors not only fund much government expenditure (over 50 per cent in Uganda, for example), but also call many of the policy shots.”

A little historical perspective on the way in which conditionality has evolved is thus important to put these shifts in context, for it ties intimately with the way in which aid disbursement has changed. At the risk of excessive simplification, one can distinguish broadly between five different periods in donor-recipient relations: