The effects of regime changes – study of recent political history of Mongolia since the fall of Communism

Western democracies frequently promote the spread of market democracy to other countries. But how do people in other countries really feel about this? Unless people have experienced different political and economic systems, it is difficult for them to make comparisons. Unlike scientific laboratory experiments, where it is possible to experiment with a control group and a subject group, this is generally not possible in respect to events within a country. If a government makes a social or economic experiment, for better or worse, the whole population shares the experience. This thesis focuses on Mongolia, which has experienced three governance systems within the past century. Until 1924 Mongolia was still a quasifeudal society, including a period as a quasi-feudal theocracy. Until the early 1920s Mongolia‘s economy was underdeveloped, with a nascent market system. From 1924 to 1990 Mongolia was a socialist republic, with a centrally planned command economy. More recently Mongolia has become a market democracy. The transitions were economically chaotic. In the 1920s Mongolia‘s economy was heavily biased towards livestock herding. An experiment in collectivisation in the early socialist period is estimated to have resulted in the loss of one third of the national herd. More recently, the transition to a market economy was very difficult. The loss of subsidies from Soviet Russia, coupled with the loss of Mongolian export markets to Russia, resulted in a marked contraction in Mongolia‘ economy. While it would be preferable to examine peoples‘ views on the transition from feudalism to socialism as well as the transition from socialism to democracy, gaining people‘s views on the transition from quasi-feudalism to socialism is difficult given the absence of living witnesses. While histories of Mongolia give some, often fractured, and possibly biased views of the events surrounding this transition, there is little evidence about how the majority of people felt about this transition. Most studies focus on the actions and motivations of elites, the leaders of revolution. However, there are abundant living witnesses to the latter transition. Hence this thesis concentrates on the political, social and economic effects of the latter transition, with a focus on how people who have lived under both systems feel about the transition. Nearly thirty years have passed since the transition. Do the Mongolian people feel they are now better off, or do they hanker for a return to socialism