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.

Winner, 2024 William H. Riker Book Award, American Political Science Association

‘Using the case of Ghana to study state-society relations in the hinterland, Prof. Noah Nathan’s excellent new book forces his readers to rethink common claims about the state. In particular, Prof. Nathan provides a fresh and compelling theory of when, how and why even a ‘weak’ state can have everlasting effects on core development outcomes such as inequality, elite capture, electoral competition, clientelism and political violence. This book should be a must read for anyone interested in developing countries’ political and economic trajectories.’

Guy Grossman - University of Pennsylvania

‘In this theoretically original and empirically rich book, Noah Nathan reveals the outsized impact of rare state interventions on social, economic, and political relations in the hinterlands. Transforming the rhetoric and refocusing the analysis on the scarcity of the state transforms our understanding of governance and government throughout the world.’

Margaret Levi - Stanford University

‘By understanding the state as scarce - and not weak - in the hinterland regions of developing countries, the reader sees the state through a different framework that is at once cleverly insightful and thought-provokingly complex. The theory presented in this book provides an important corrective to … foundational theories of historical political economy while simultaneously earning it a place on the shelf next to these classics.’

Natalie Wenzell Letsa Source: Governance

‘… makes a major contribution to the literature on the state and should also be read with great interest by scholars of traditional leadership, social institutions, and local politics.’

Lauren Honig