In the last months of 2022 and now in the first decades of 2023, political and civil society discourse in Mongolia has resumed with calls for constitutional change. Calls for legislative change became especially loud when the largest corruption scandal in the country’s recent history was uncovered, involving the theft of coal from Mongolia’s strategic deposits. At the heart of this debate over the transformation of the country’s political system was the choice between a parliamentary and a presidential model of the republic.
In its three decades of democratic development, Mongolia has shown a clear trend toward a parliamentary model of democracy. The last major step in this direction was the law limiting presidential powers to one term. Nevertheless, the country cannot yet be called a fully parliamentary republic: The country’s president still has considerable powers that are, in principle, subordinate to those of Parliament. However, the general vector of political thought in Mongolia aims to reduce the role of presidential power in favor of the power of the State Great Khural, the parliament of democratic Mongolia.
In the context of the excalating debate in Mongolia, many experts theorize that such a reform would have a negative impact on the prospects for Russian-Mongolian cooperation. It is believed that the transition to a parliamentary form of government would make Mongolia less similar to the Russian Federation, which is a presidential republic. At the same time, a parliamentary republic would make Mongolia more similar to Russia’s main international rivals in European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany.
It is hard to deny that the “institutional compatibility” between Russia and Mongolia would decrease in this most likely scenario of Mongolian reforms. However, contrary to the above view, there are a number of factors that, when taken into account, make it clear that Moscow seriously benefits from Mongolia’s transformation into a parliamentary republic.
Mongolia’s Parliamentary Republic as a Guarantee of Macro-Political Stability in the Russian Federation’s Neighboring State
In modern Mongolia, the distribution of power and property is much more in line with the parliamentary model than with the system of centralized government by one person or another. Significant financial and political resources in Mongolia are distributed among numerous factions of the country’s two largest parties, the Mongolian People’s Party and the Mongolian Democratic Party. Since the 1990s, a system has been established in which factions within the party reach an agreement on the distribution of all possible privileges and resources and then compete with one another. Under such conditions, when strong presidential power is established, the struggle for the presidency can exacerbate both the struggle within party factions, which divides the party into a variety of feuds, and the interactions between parties. In the language of “game theory,” the current political process in Mongolia, which can be described as a “positive-sum game” in which one can win little but retain their status as a player, may turn into a “zero-sum game” in the transition to a presidential-republican form of government, in which the victory of one player would automatically mean a heavy defeat for all other players and possibly a decline in their political and economic status. In this respect, the parliamentary model is more in line with the interests of the “elites” and therefore poses less of a threat to the country’s political stability. Russia, as Mongolia’s immediate neighbor, has little interest in destabilizing the political situation in that country, which could be the case with the transition to a presidential form of government.
The parliamentary model will better ensure that the PRC and Russian Federation maintain parity in their positions in Mongolia
An analysis of Russia’s gains or losses from constitutional reforms in Mongolia must also be made in the context of the triangular system of relations between Russia, Mongolia, and China that exists in the region. For example, the strengthening of presidential power may lead to the emergence of an authoritarian type of leadership in the country, with limited changes in power. In this case, a very limited but extremely stable circle of leaders in the country becomes more vulnerable to foreign influence and must ensure its political survival by joining forces with one or another external force. Most likely, the choice of the external political and economic guarantor of the newly formed “top” will fall on China rather than Russia because of its large number of promising economic proposals. In this situation, it would be more difficult to attract Mongolia’s political elite to Russia than it was in the 1990s with a number of post-Soviet authoritarian leaders: today’s Mongolia exists in an already established regional environment in which China’s economic role seems to be dominant. Therefore, the republican parliamentary model in Mongolia is more likely to maintain parity between Russia’s and China’s political and economic positions in Mongolia, which suits Russia’s interest in the current environment.
The parliamentary model benefits the Russian Federation, which wants to maintain its influence, more than China and the “Third Neighbor” countries, which want to expand their influence
The parliamentary model has the potential to slow the implementation of major infrastructure projects in Mongolia. The presence of real political power among a variety of party candidates can slow government decision-making on major economic projects proposed to Mongolia by other countries. In addition, the inherent unpredictability of the parliamentary model in making limited legislative changes may reduce the interest of large foreign investors in Mongolia. In this regard, the parliamentary model of the political process will benefit Russia by limiting the strengthening of China’s and Western countries’ economic positions in the country. After the sale of Russian shares in the mining and processing company Erdenet and Mongolrostsvetmet SOE, Russia is focusing on maintaining its economic initiatives in Mongolia rather than strengthening them. At the same time, all other global players are focused on expanding their participation in the Mongolian economy, particularly in the mining sector. Incidentally, this pattern does not apply to the projects that are in the interest of Mongolia’s two major neighbors: The construction of a gas pipeline through its territory, for example, is beneficial to both neighboring powers, albeit to different degrees, which severely limits the ability of certain groups in Mongolia to obstruct its implementation. Thus, the parliamentary political process, with its incessant struggle between political factions in the legislature, is more beneficial to foreign powers seeking to maintain their positions than to those seeking to expand them.
A more comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of potential reforms in Mongolia therefore opens up much better prospects for cooperation with the neighboring country than the projections of the future that result from a superficial and purely institutional understanding of Mongolia’s potential constitutional changes.
Boris Kushkhov, the Department for Korea and Mongolia at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”
