Taking the evolution of the quality agenda in the UK as its centrepiece, this article analyses the politics of legitimation accompanying the emergence of quality assurance and the contribution of quality enhancement to the power play therein. This article argues that over the last 25 years the quality agenda has been used as a proxy--a state steering mechanism--to fulfil political ends and that two trends mark that history: the rise of the regulatory state and the development of quasi-markets. The article also places these issues into the contexts of globalisation and the emergence of regions of quality assurance around the world. However, what shapes the article is not this argument per se, but trying critically to reflect on the quality agenda as a political position, and see the ways in which the epistemology of higher education is embedded in the politics of both national reforms and international political relations.