States are often minimally present in the rural periphery.Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact.Isolated state actions in regions where the state is otherwise scarce can have outsize, long-lasting effects on society.The Scarce State reframes our understanding of the political economy of hinterlands through a multi-method study of Northern Ghana alongside shadow cases from other world regions.Drawing on a historical natural experiment, the book shows how the contemporary economic and political elite emerged in Ghana's hinterland, linking interventions by an ostensibly weak state to new socio-economic inequality and grassroots efforts to reimagine traditional institutions.The book demonstrates how these state-generated societal changes reshaped access to political power, producing dynastic politics, clientelism, and violence.The Scarce State challenges common claims about state-building and state weakness, provides new evidence on the historical origins of inequality, and reconsiders the mechanisms linking historical institutions to contemporary politics.