Carlene J. Edie has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1989. She received her PhD from UCLA. Her principal research interests have been in the areas of comparative political economy with a focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. She is the author of DEMOCRACY BY DEFAULT: DEPENDENCY AND CLIENTELISM IN JAMAICA (1991) and POLITICS IN AFRICA: A NEW BEGINNING? (2002). She is also the editor of DEMOCRACY IN THE CARIBBEAN: MYTHS AND REALITIES (1994). Through much of her early work, her scholarship emphasized the impact of external dependency on state formation and governance in specific Caribbean and African states (e.g. Jamaica, The Gambia). Her recent research focuses on the topic of the potential for a viable indigenous black capitalist class in Jamaica given the specific features of its political economy.  She is currently working on, CRONY CAPITALISM AND THE BAILOUT OF THE INDIGENOUS FINANCIAL SECTOR IN JAMAICA IN THE 1990s.