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Conditionality, and the extent to which it should be associated with development aid, has been a major concern within the donor community over the past decades. Practitioners argue in favour of associating budget support (BS) with some level of conditionality. A scientific analysis by Cordella and Dell'Ariccia confirms this view. The aim of this article is to qualify the circumstances under which conditionality is an effective complement to BS. To do this, we develop a theoretical model based on Cordella and Dell'Ariccia. We show that the optimal use of conditionality depends on the recipient's developmental preferences, the productivity of the inputs and the level of aid compared with the recipient's budget: when these parameters are relatively high, conditionality should be enforced. Otherwise, the optimal aid allocation is such that all the aid is given through unconditional BS. We conclude that conditionality does not always improve aid effectiveness.Depuis quelques décennies, la conditionnalité, et la mesure dans laquelle elle devrait être associée à l'aide publique au développement, est un souci majeur pour la communauté des bailleurs de fonds. Les praticiens du développement plaident en faveur d'un certain degrès de conditionnalité associé à l'aide budgétaire. Une analyse scientifique de Cordella et Dell'Ariccia (2007) renforce cette perspective. Le but de cet article est d'identifier les circonstances dans lesquelles la conditionnalité est un complément efficace à l'aide budgétaire. A cette fin, nous avons développé un modèle théorique dérivé de l'analyse de Cordella et Dell'Ariccia. Nous démontrons que l'utilisation optimale de la conditionnalité dépend des préférences du gouvernement récipiendaire en termes de politique de développement, de la productivité des apports et du niveau de l'aide publique au développement par rapport au budget du gouvernement récipiendaire. Lorsque ces paramètres sont relativement élevés, la conditionnalité devrait être appliquée. En cas contraire, l'aide publique au développement est optimale lorsque l'aide budgétaire est inconditionnelle. Nous en concluons que la conditionnalité n'améliore pas toujours l'efficacité de l'aide budgétaire. as to whether the donor's perspective is more or less legitimate than the recipient's. Our analysis of conditionality rests on the following trade-off: Conditionality associated with foreign aid helps to limit the problem of fungibility. It also implies that no aid is given to those who do not comply with the condition, which is worse than unconditional aid.The effectiveness of foreign aid has been a major concern in recent decades. Several empirical studies have shown the weak impact of aid on poverty reduction and growth (for example,

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