Disrupting the democratic fabric on the local level: Far-right populist practices and their effects on political and cultural institutions in Germany

Ten years after the party was founded in 2013, today the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is represented in all state parliaments and in numerous municipal and city parliaments – with steadily growing shares and increasing support from voters. And even if the AfD is still largely marginalised and excluded in parliamentary work (Heinze 2022), its presence in committees and its work in parliaments has an impact on democracy and democratic institutions. This paper will use case studies to analyse far-right populist practices on the local level and demonstrate how these practices affect the local democratic fabric in Germany. The analysis is based on an interview study with professionals employed at cultural institutions such as museums and heritage sites in Germany about their experiences with far-right populist interventions into their sphere of work. Using three examples from Berlin, Dresden and a rural region in Thuringia, the paper takes into focus how the populist far right aims at disrupting the work of democratic institutions, and how they make their politics work at the local level. While research on far-right populism has been predominated by ‘externalist approaches’ and a focus on either demand or supply side (Castelli Gattinara, 2020), this paper takes inspiration from Jansen (2011, p. 75ff.) and looks at "populism as a mode of political practice" that is locally and situationally "enacted" and "spatially and temporally bounded." The paper thus argues that local context matters, but still presents particular practices of far-right populism that are being used to disrupt, including parliamentary requests and motions, and different forms of attacks, including hate speech, and personal threats. These practices aim at disrupting the work in democratic institutions, at intimidating the workers employed there, and at distracting the workers from their focus on certain issues and topics. The paper further shows how these practices become effective on the local level, if, for example, the intimidation results in self-censorship and disengagement in cultural institutions.