The Radical Right and the State

Across the liberal-democratic world, ties between radical-right parties and civil servants have raised concern about the loyalty of the state apparatus. Drawing on the concept of militant democracy, we propose that states can counter the infiltration by the far right by publicly denouncing extremist organizations and threatening to impose disciplinary measures on civil servants who associate with them. We test our argument in Germany, a post-war militant democracy that is now facing a challenge from the far-right AfD party, which counts a significant number of civil servants among its members and tries to undermine the state from within. Our empirical strategy exploits subnational variation in surveillance of the AfD combined with data on thousands of candidates for the local elections between 2014 and 2024. This study contributes to our understanding of far-right politics by illuminating the relationship between radical-right parties and state actors.