The nature of IMF programmes in developing countries, and the policy conditions (or 'conditionality') attached to these, became the subject of an almost ritualised controversy during the 1960s and 1970s but this debate has lost much of its fire in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which Fund conditionality has changed since the author last studied this subject a decade ago, against the background of the earlier controversy, and to evaluate the changes that have occurred.