Mongolia: Democracy or hybrid democracy surrounded by authoritarian, hybrid regimes?

ABSTRACT

The current state of democracy in Mongolia is 1960 Kuwait, 1980 Qatar, 1995 Abu Dhabi, 2012 Mongolia all the same? This was the headline of the “Financial Times” newspaper in March 2012. Mongolia experienced the fastest growing economic growth in the world with 17.2 % of GDP growth in 2011, 12.3% in 2012. But the growth rate didn’t sustain longer and showed significant decline since 2012. Why? The country has since then not been able to meet the expectations that it had accumulated from its previous year’s successful growth performances. At the same time, the assessments of the rule of law, the political stability and the effectiveness of the government have been downgraded, suggesting that Mongolia may not be immune to the resources curse. In fact, Mongolian democracy has been in decline in the past 5 years because of the weak rule of law and justice, clientelism, patronage, corruption and cronyism without much public engagement. Clientelism and relations of patronage are all at risk, especially with the low level of rule of law and high corruption in the country. 

Mongolia is a landlocked country situated between the world’s two superpowers with hybrid regimes. In the south, it is bordered with China that has socialism with its own Chinese characteristics, and in the north, it is bordered with Russia that has authoritarian/totalitarian oligarchy with father figurehead leaders, what we call as countries with hybrid regime system.

Nevertheless, given the present state of Mongolia, external and internal factors, the manifestation of strong civil society and sound political movements for the change might be crucial aspect for defining country’s path towards full democratic development or essentially a corrupt police state with small elite fraction groups ruling over the poor masses.

SPEAKER BIO

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Zandanshatar Gombojav comes to Stanford as a Visiting Scholar at CDDRL.  Before his appointment as Foreign Minister, 2011 during which he had many foreign policy accomplishments from renewing the country's foreign policy concept, which was described as democracy-oriented third neighbour policy, to adopting new trade agreements with several partners and thus started the economic dimension program of the foreign relations. He has made significant contribution in making Mongolia the official member of The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). One of the major achievements during his tenure is that Mongolia took presidency over the community of democracies. His current research interest focuses on issues related to the democratic and political development of Mongolia given its geostrategic situation. At Stanford, he will be working on a larger research project encompassing regional democratic and political development from Mongolia's unique perspective.

He has published extensively on various banking issues and also on topics regarding the international relations process in refereed journals and different conference proceedings. He has been a strong supporter of the reform process, being actively involved in the organization of youth development.