I'm trying to sign a transaction using bitcoind via rpc. Here is the request I send.

signrawtransaction "01000000017267f196964c70d529ba2c16c84f1fd8b52d983eb472bd005423c51ba15e6fbb0000000000ffffffff020065cd1d000000001976a9147c9b6f1bc7173d2751d49f072c6d29a10d40e24188acf03dcd1d000000001976a9144d814b8163d4cf7ad896cc5ecaba8a2c3790950c88ac00000000" '[]' '["cVAKPN7Rioo1ZLVjALa6n38iqSCd6g9zdyG5UUNcNphikstmwWHW"]'

When I send that to the bitcoind daemon with all the blockchain downloaded it's working perfectly:

{"hex":"01000000017267f196964c70d529ba2c16c84f1fd8b52d983eb472bd005423c51ba15e6fbb000000006b48304502201d8199f2639579435e9d3c3d5f2245195d2c8f370bd738996120570146048f4e022100ad33352531fdc8805903d745a460249b5487555b72596a089dec724dc8df0700012103129f14097719e665939e778ef876d0022528b954b95d69b39194b9c764b4ae83ffffffff020065cd1d000000001976a9147c9b6f1bc7173d2751d49f072c6d29a10d40e24188acf03dcd1d000000001976a9144d814b8163d4cf7ad896cc5ecaba8a2c3790950c88ac00000000","complete":true}

But when I remove the blockchain file, it's not working anymore

{"hex":"01000000017267f196964c70d529ba2c16c84f1fd8b52d983eb472bd005423c51ba15e6fbb0000000000ffffffff020065cd1d000000001976a9147c9b6f1bc7173d2751d49f072c6d29a10d40e24188acf03dcd1d000000001976a9144d814b8163d4cf7ad896cc5ecaba8a2c3790950c88ac00000000","complete":false}

Does bitcoind need the blockchain to sign the transaction (it would be highly surprising to me), or is there something I am missing?

PS: I tried to sign the transaction on a freshly installed bitcoind and it wasn't working. All the "delete the blockchain files" part was only to make sure that it was really the blockchain missing that was causing the problem and not a strangely installed/configured bitcoind.