Elections in fragile democracies are not merely contests over policy but battles for control over state resources, including foreign aid. Aid provides local governments with substantial discretionary funds, creating strong incentives for rentseeking political actors to capture political office. To win elections, political actors, both in government and opposition, try to reduce electoral competition through targeted political violence, especially in weakly institutionalized settings, where the economic stakes from gaining (or losing) office are higher and the potential costs of using targeted violence are limited. We empirically test this argument using novel geo-located data on aid disbursements from 18 European donors and the United States, covering the period from 1990 to 2020. Applying an instrumental variables (IV) approach, we find that foreign aid is associated with higher levels of targeted political violence against local authorities and politicians, in particular during elections and in contexts with weak institutions and strong informal politics. These findings highlight the unintended consequences of foreign aid, showing how it can lead to targeted political violence by increasing the stakes of political competition. 

We study how global oil price shocks affect the spatial distribution of violent conflict. Combining monthly georeferenced data on oil infrastructure with conflict events worldwide over 1989--2021, we exploit exogenous variation in world crude oil prices within countries using grid-cell and country*month fixed effects. Oil price increases raise organized conflict in oil-bearing cells but reduce it in nearby non-oil areas, indicating a spatial reallocation of territorial violence toward economically valuable locations rather than a uniform increase in conflict. By contrast, lower-intensity unrest spreads across neighboring cells, consistent with diffuse grievance and mobilization channels. The effect is strongest for petroleum fields and driven by state-based conflict, consistent with intensified contestation over oil rents, while downstream infrastructure is associated with protests and localized violence. The magnitude of the response varies with ethnic exclusion, institutions, geography, and ownership, pointing to rent-contestation mechanisms shaped by local conditions.