Sentence:  In the popular imagination, and not only there, the progressive and beneficial side of the oil industry ... has been tied in inextricably with a darker side which has featured massive corruption, the <WSD>fomentation</WSD> of political upheavals within particular countries and the concentration of power on an international scale in a way which has led to large-scale but unpredictable shifts in the structure of the world oil system. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Encouragement; excitation; instigation.