Rachel Sigman

Rachel Sigman is Associate Professor of Democratic Governance, a project manager with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and a faculty affiliate with the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy and the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies (ICRS).

Dr. Sigman conducts research in the areas of comparative and African politics, focusing on questions of government performance, democratic backsliding and resilience, and the politics of public policy implementation. In her first book, Parties, Political Finance, and Governance in Africa (Cambridge University Press 2023), Dr. Sigman explains how political party institutions mediate the relationship between political financing and politicization of executive and bureaucratic institutions. Her current book project examines bureaucratic responses to democratic backsliding. Dr. Sigman has also published research on the measurement of state capacity and exclusion, the effects of oil revenue on bureaucratic institutions, the relationship between distributional inequality and autocratization, and civil-military relations (including military coups and international security sector assistance) in Africa. She has partnered and consulted with a wide variety of international organizations including the Open Society Initiative, the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. Africa Command.