![Horizontal Accountability in Mongolia: The Challenges of (Counter) BalancingGanbat Damba[1], Mina Sumaadii[2]Academy of ...](https://img3.ngos1.com/699/418/785628446994182.jpg)
15/05/2024
Horizontal Accountability in Mongolia: The Challenges of (Counter) Balancing
Ganbat Damba[1], Mina Sumaadii[2]
Academy of Political Education
1. Introduction
The 1992 Constitution is considered the “blueprint of Mongolia democracy” (Sanders 1992). This Constitution has served Mongolia’s democracy well, as to date, eight electoral cycles have been held regularly, yielding uncertain outcomes and fostering multiparty competition for the people’s votes. In the Varieties of Democracy Project’s liberal democracy index, Mongolia started with a score of 0.41 in 1991 and, with slight fluctuations, ended with a score of 0.49 in 2021 (V-Dem Project 2022). At its height, it reached 0.61 in 1999. This reflects that Mongolia’s road to democratic development was not smooth and had its ups and downs. Nonetheless, these scores consistently place Mongolia in the “electoral democracy” category. While this is an accomplishment in comparison to other post-communist states in the region, it is still a democracy which has institutional challenges and much room for improvement.
Based on this, this report examines the internal structure of Mongolian democracy from the point of institutional checks and balances that exist under the constitutional setting. Therefore, we present a concept of horizontal accountability, which is part of a series of constraints on government use of political power. In the Mongolian media and political discussions, horizontal accountability is not a commonly used term. As one of the cornerstones of good governance, it measures the extent to which the government is accountable to other branches (Lührmann et al 2017). This is a particularly important issue for Mongolian governance to address, given the scope of reforms that shifted the domestic power balances among the government branches in recent years. Moreover, due to the low level of trust in public institutions and a lack of belief in the impartiality of politicians (Sant Maral Foundation 2023), the public is increasingly turning to protests as a preferred measure to hold the government accountable. Overall, this suggests that citizens no longer have the patience to rely on institutional checks and balances to represent or defend public interests; instead, they are increasingly inclined to take matters into their own hands.
As a result, addressing the related governance issues is becoming an increasingly important task for the quality and durability of Mongolian democracy.
The V-Dem Project traces that the horizontal accountability index (scaled low to high (0-1)) in Mongolia had a score of 0.9 in 1991 and throughout the remainder of the 1990s (V-Dem Project 2022). Yet, it decreased following each constitutional amendment in 1999/2000 and 2019. Eventually, after fluctuations, it ended with a score of 0.78 in 2021 (V-Dem Project 2022). While in the broader historical context, the scores in the last three decades are at their highest level since Mongolia transitioned to democracy, the gradual decrease in the horizontal accountability index follows the general trend of declining government accountability.
Click on this link for more details....https://academy.edu.mn/2024/03/12/horizontal-accountability-in-mongoliathe-challenges-of-counter-balancing/
