In January 2004, a French Internet petition entitled ‘Let's Save Research’ (Sauvons la Recherche) became a tremendous success : as of March 2004, 72,000 French researchers had signed the text (Alberganti and Foucart, 2004). The protest focuses on the transformation of 550 permanent research posts into temporary positions. Whilst representatives of the ‘hard sciences’ dominate this protest movement, those working in the humanities are playing a much more marginal role in it. Perhaps this is because budgetary cuts are, indeed, noth ing new for humanities fields such as sociology, history and … political science.

The situation of the latter discipline is catastrophic. Budget cuts had been imposed well before the April 2002 victory of the right-wing coalition in the presidential elections and the subsequent nomination of Jean-Pierre Raffarin as Prime Minister, and included such measures as the deliberate non-replacement of retirees.

Fundamental reforms of the Austrian university system in recent years represent a radical break with the past, a change of paradigm in the guiding principles and workings of the university and its relationship with its environment. I call this the ‘managerial and entrepreneurial turn’ in Austrian higher education. Nevertheless, these changes did not occur abruptly but in connection with long-term socio-economic trends, international developments and shifts in the ideologies of key actors with in and outside the university system. In the most recent period, a key external influence - the European Bologna process - has played a critical role in shaping reforms.

We are living at a time of great unrest, conflict and doubt about our political frames of reference - of confusion regarding the present and disorientation regarding the future. The rapid changes in disciplinary boundaries that we have witnessed in recent years are giving rise to new scenarios and perspectives . Inquiring into how we should approach these new contexts thus seems imperative as far as the innovative potential of the discipline itself is concerned. Increasingly, there is a widely held view that theoretical reflection and the political decisions that are made here and now are of vital importance, since the design of the political society of the future is at stake.

It is now widely acknowledged that women are under-represented politically a round the world, and that this under-representation is problematic. Women constitute 15 per cent of the members of parliaments globally, ranging from 48.8 per cent in Rwanda and 45.3 in Sweden to none in Bahrain and Kuwait. This under-representation is thought to matter by different people for different reasons. The most frequently articulated reasons within the gender politics literature focus on three issues : the development of a just and equal society is hindered; women's interests remain unfulfilled; and democracy is likely to become atrophied (Phillips, 1995 : 62-83). The ‘justice’ argument implies that numerically equal rep resentation of women and men in legislatures is itself an indication of parity, regardless of the beliefs of those present or the policies enacted.

In recent years, countries around the world have pursued numerous in novations in political participation. The most common reforms, from a global perspective, have been provisions for the increasedrepresentationof women. Today, nearly all countries have pledged to promote gender-balanced decision-making (United Nations, 1995), and more than eighty have witnessed the adoption of quotas for the selection of female candidates. These provisions include reserved seats, which set aside a certain number of seats for women; political party quotas, which aim to increase the proportion of women among party candidates; and national legislative quotas, which require political parties to nominate a certain percentage of women among their candidates.

Introducing gender quotas in politics is often a difficult endeavour: quotas tend to trigger controversial debates between those who find them a necessary, just and legitimate measure to redress women's under-representation, and those who think that they are arbitrary, discriminatory, contrary to the free will of the voter or an obstacle to national cohesion. More or less explicitly, quota debates extend to issues much wider than the narrow question of women's presence in parliament: discourses on gender quotas express contrasting understandings of political justice; gender, gender identities and gender inequalities; and the role of the state with regard to social and political inequalities between women and men. More generally, quota debates can be considered as sites of struggle for the redefinition of the relation between gender, justice and the political.

Slovenin, enters the European Union as a kind of ‘success story’. Its transition to the free market economy was one of the least problematic, with few shocks, steady growth and stable economic indicators. Gross Domestic Product per capita increased from $6,275 in 1992 to $9,805 in 2001, and, in Purchasing Power Parities from sixty-four to seventy over the same period. The unemployment rate has fallen (from 7.2 per cent in 1996 to 6 per cent in 2002), and is relatively similar for men and women (5.7 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively) (Republic of Slovenia, 1997; 2004a).

Gender quotas of various types have become a topic of intense interest to feminist political scientists during the last ten years. In this context, mentioning Finnish gender quotas, which only target indirectly elected bodies, tends to produce disbelieving stares: surely you do not regard them as significant or in any way comparable to reserved seats or quotas for electoral lists? Puzzled, I have ascribed this reaction to cultural differences, the varying emphasis given to policy deliberations in different political systems, or plain ignorance. The main reason for the latter seems to be a lack of information about the fact that the Finnish gender quota law is also applied to political executive structures at the local and regional levels. In Finland, unlike in many European countries where local executive power resides in the mayor's office, these happen to be major centres of power, especially at the municipal level.

This article presents the main perspectives of the Stockholm-based research project ‘Gender Quotas: a Key to Equality?’ and analyses recent developments in Afghanistan and Iraq, countries which illustrate the new trend in demands for gender quotas even in strictly male-dominated societies. How has it been possible to place the disempowerment of women on the agenda in these post-war countries where state-building processes are dominated by external forces?

The aim of the research project ‘Gender Quotas: a Key to Equality?’ is to carry out a comparative analysis of the new global trend in the use of electoral gender quotas.’ The focus of the study is on : 1) the discursive controversies surrounding the introduction of quotas; 2) the quota provisions themselves; 3) the often troublesome implementation of different types of quota arrangement in various electoral systems, and, finally 4) the effects of the introduction of quotas on women's political representation, in both quantitative (the number of women) and qualitative terms (political empowerment of women).

Gender quotas and related issues such as parity democracy or reservations for women are ‘hot’ in the sense that they feed intensive discussions a bout their legitimacy and efficiency, both at the theoretical and the practical level. The aim of these discussions is to search for convincing arguments, but they occasionally lead to the confusion of personal opinion with what is hoped to be a general normative argument (Meier, 2002). On the whole, however, these issues a re discussed in a sort of vacuum. Debates a relimited to the question of whether women should and need be present in larger numbers in political decision-making bodies. Sometimes discussions become somewhat broader and address whether sex is a relevant factor when it comes to issues of political representation, therefore including both men and women in the analysis.