Aid policy and evidence: is conditionality well-based?

In 'Politics, evidence and the new aid agenda', published in the Development Policy Review, January 2004, Tony Killick questions the use of conditionality as a means for achieving policy change in aid-recipient countries:

"On the one hand, much research - and quite a lot of Bank (but not Fund) rhetoric - emphasises the limitations of conditionality as an instrument for change. On the other, it is arguable that, at least within low-income indebted countries, governments find themselves expected to conform to an even wider array of policy stipulations than in the apparent heyday of conditionality in the earlier 1990s. However, the issues here are complex and the evidential basis less satisfactory. They are also important, because if misplaced reliance is placed on an instrument which actually fails to deliver the safeguards it appears to offer this can lead to the mis-application of large amounts of public money".