From Sports Clubs to Ballot Boxes: Far Right Infiltration of Civil Society and Consequences for Political Behavior

Does the strategic infiltration of civil society associations strengthen far-right parties? While existing research on far-right normalization emphasizes elite cues and electoral breakthroughs, less is known about how extremist actors gain influence through grassroots embedding in everyday social life. I argue that by entering and assuming leadership positions in non-political associations - sports clubs, cultural societies, church councils - far-right actors normalize their ideology, reducing the perceived costs of supporting extremist politics. I construct a novel dataset linking AfD candidates and members to leadership positions in more than 480,000 civil society associations across Germany between 2013 and 2025, providing the first systematic measurement of far-right embeddedness in local civic life. Leveraging variation in the timing of leadership turnover within associations, I employ a staggered difference-in-differences design to estimate the causal impact of AfD infiltration on electoral support, far-right attitudes, and hate crimes. This study reveals a critical mechanism through which democratic societies become vulnerable to extremist influence: the everyday social spaces meant to strengthen civic life can become vehicles for undermining democratic norms and empowering anti-democratic movements.