Region and ethnicity are key drivers of distributive politics in clientelist regimes. Yet it is unclear how these distributive strategies may change over time, particularly in cases of social upheaval or mass internal displacement which shift local populations. This is a significant theoretical gap given the increasing prevalence of displacement and conflict in clientelistic states throughout the developing world. This project examines whether the state shifts patterns of distributive politics following war and social upheaval and if so, how? We argue that while new regimes may desire to shift resources away from their political rivals, these efforts are constrained by the targetability and excludability of public goods. We examine the case of local variation in public goods in Iraq following the US invasion to test our theory, using night lights data, survey data, and observational data from 1997 to 2013.