Rachel Sigman, Ph.D. - Department of National Security Affairs
Assistant Professor
Expertise: Comparative Politics, Political Economy of Development, Sub-Saharan Africa
Rachel Sigman is an assistant professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research and teaching focus on African politics and security, the political economy of development, democracy and democratization, and the workings of state bureaucratic institutions in Africa and across the developing world.
Dr. Sigman’s book manuscript, Extracting Money, Shaping States, establishes a link between political party institutions, political fundraising, and patterns of politicization in state executive and bureaucratic institutions in Africa. Other research projects include a survey experiment examining the effects of new oil revenue on bureaucrats in Ghana and Uganda, a statistical re-assessment of the linkages between state building and democratization, and a study conducted jointly with NPS students on U.S. influence in African countries.
Dr. Sigman was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), where she currently serves as a non-resident program manager working to develop new measures of exclusion. She is also involved in a collaborative effort to develop new cross-national measures of state capacity.
Dr. Sigman completed her PhD in political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and her BA in social studies at Wesleyan University.
Teaching Interests:
Comparative Economic Systems
Political Economy of Development
Government and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa