Resource windfalls and political sabotage: Evidence from 5.2 million political ads

We study the role of incentives in inducing sabotage in political contents, vis-à-vis natural resource windfalls. The latter induce plausibly exogenous increases in contests' stakes by extending opportunities for policy implementation or private gain upon winning and enhancing incumbent advantage. A model of political contests with endogenous sabotage indicates that higher stakes increase sabotage in political campaigns. We validate these predictions using over 5 million TV ads from United States gubernatorial elections (2010–2020), leveraging plausibly exogenous variations in states' natural resource endowments. Results show that resource windfalls significantly escalate negative campaigning: A standard deviation increase in resource windfalls leads to a 10% rise in campaign negativity. We show that this effect is primarily fueled by corruption and observed most strongly in symmetric, more competitive environments.