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Rachel Gisselquist

Research Director, Ibrahim Index of African Governance

Contact:
Telephone: 617-495-2550
Fax: 617-491-8588
Email: rachel_gisselquist@ksg.harvard.edu

Experience

Rachel Gisselquist works with the Program on Intrastate Conflict where she directs research on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance project.  The first Ibrahim Index, authored by Robert I. Rotberg and Rachel M. Gisselquist, was released in September 2007.  As a pre-doctoral Belfer Center fellow during 2005-2007, Dr. Gisselquist completed her dissertation and received her Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June 2007.  She also holds an MPP from the Kennedy School (1999) and BSFS from Georgetown University.  Her research and publications focus on comparative politics in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, in particular governance, ethnic and identity politics, democratization, and elections.

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance measures and compares the quality of governance across all forty-eight sub-Saharan African countries by focusing on the delivery of key political goods. The 2007 Index and related papers are available online at http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/index and in Strengthening African Governance – Ibrahim Index of African Governance: Results and Rankings 2007, Robert I. Rotberg and Rachel M. Gisselquist (Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and World Peace Foundation, 2007). 

Dr. Gisselquist’s dissertation, “Ethnic Leftists, Populist Ethnics: The New Politics of Identity,” measures and explains changes in the relative salience of ethnicity and class in electoral politics in emerging democracies. The manuscript is currently under revision.  In addition, she is one of the co-authors of the “Constructivist Dataset on Ethnicity and Institutions 2005” (CDEI 2005), a project on ethnic parties around the world led by Kanchan Chandra (NYU). Other recent papers include an article on democratization in Benin as part of the project, “Deviant Democracies: Democratization against All Odds,” led by Renske Doorenspleet, Petr Kopecky, and Cas Mudde. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-0419737), the National Security Education Program, MIT’s Center for International Studies, and the Carroll L. Wilson Award.  She has presented her research in various forums, including annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Latin American Studies Association, and Midwest Political Science Association.