Quotas have long been determined to be the main and very often most effective tool in the battle against gender inequality in political representation. Most of the existing literature so far focuses on established democracies. This paper, by contrast, analyzes the post-communist countries of South Eastern Europe. We offer an original approach to the analysis of the effects of gender quotas: we propose to take into account the combined effects of quotas and of the structure of party competition. Drawing on our earlier work on gender quotas in the Balkans, we analyze gender quota provisions on the one hand, and regulatory frameworks that affect party competition on the other hand. Against data on the descriptive representation of women, we analyze the regulations in place from a gendered perspective, seeking to explain women’s representation in the region as a function of both institutions and historical legacies.
