HESSELINK, Martijn Willem2025-05-142025-05-142020Verfassungsdebate, 2020, What comes after neoliberalism, OnlineOnly2366-7044https://hdl.handle.net/1814/92682Published online: 01 September 2020This article belongs to the debate 'What comes after neoliberalism'. Are parity laws requiring political parties to alternate between men and women on party lists compatible with democracy? The constitutional court of the German state of Thuringia did not think so, in a decision taken yesterday by 6 men against three dissenting votes, among them the only two female justices on the bench. In most of Europe and many other parts of the world, however, legislated gender quotas are increasingly common. What shall we make of this?Most of the contributions to the excellent collection of essays central to this symposium, refer to neoliberalism, in some cases quite frequently. None of them defines the concept, nor does any of them defend neoliberalism. The term is used mostly in a (very) critical sense, sometimes even dismissively. This book is far from unique in this respect. Indeed, the term neoliberalism is almost never used by politicians or scholars in order to vindicate a political ideal. Instead, during the past decade it has become a standard feature of left-wing political discourse, not only in academia and political activism, but also in mainstream left-wing politics. It is a term used by us to refer to them and their abominable politics.application/pdfeninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Article10.17176/20200901-183502-0Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International