Mongolia Focus

By Julian Dierkes

I recently posted my description of what the Academic Freedom Index measures and how Mongolia has been scored. Is Mongolia’s decline on Academic Freedom Index real? Or, what is this decline measuring?

How are we to understand Mongolia’s score?

But, even though the declining score may be less meaningful in magnitude than it seems initially, it clearly is measuring something. What might that something be?

Looking at #AcademicFreedomIndex components @vdeminstitute.bsky.social since 2015 in more detail.

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— Mongolia Focus (@mongoliafocus.bsky.social) 9. April 2025 um 11:10

First, what are the five indicators measuring? Here, I turn to the V-Dem codebook for answers. Note the listing of answers also gives some meaning to the numbers that are reported with the index scores. For example, when the index reports 2.81 as the score for “freedom to research and teach” that means that the answer “Mostly free. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are rarely subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.” (see below) is closest to the average value reported.

Freedom of Academic and Cultural Expression

Survey question: “Is there academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression related to political issues?”
Answers:
0: Not respected by public authorities. Censorship and intimidation are frequent. Academic activities and cultural expressions are severely restricted or controlled by the government.
1: Weakly respected by public authorities. Academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression are practiced occasionally, but direct criticism of the government is mostly met with repression.
2: Somewhat respected by public authorities. Academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression are practiced routinely, but strong criticism of the government is sometimes met with repression.
3: Mostly respected by public authorities. There are few limitations on academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression, and resulting sanctions tend to be infrequent and soft.
4: Fully respected by public authorities. There are no restrictions on academic freedom or cultural expression.

Freedom to research and teach

Question: “To what extent are scholars free to develop and pursue their own research and teaching agendas without interference?”
Answers:
0: Completely restricted. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are, across all disciplines, consistently subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.
1: Severely restricted. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are, in some disciplines, consistently subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.
2: Moderately restricted. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are occasionally subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.
3: Mostly free. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are rarely subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.
4: Fully free. When determining their research agenda or teaching curricula, scholars are not subject to interference or incentivized to self-censor.

Freedom of academic exchange and dissemination

Question: “To what extent are scholars free to exchange and communicate research ideas and findings?”
Answers:
0: Completely restricted. Academic exchange and dissemination is, across all disciplines, consistently subject to censorship, self-censorship or other restrictions.
1: Severely restricted. Academic exchange and dissemination is, in some disciplines, consistently subject to censorship, self-censorship or other restrictions.
2: Moderately restricted. Academic exchange and dissemination is occasionally subject to censorship, self-censorship or other restrictions.
3: Mostly free. Academic exchange and dissemination is rarely subject to censorship, self-censorship or other restrictions.
4: Fully free. Academic exchange and dissemination is not subject to censorship, self-censorship or other restrictions.

Institutional autonomy

Question: “To what extent do universities exercise institutional autonomy in practice?”
Answers:
0: No autonomy at all. Universities do not exercise any degree of institutional autonomy; non-academic actors control decision-making.
1: Minimal autonomy. Universities exercise only very limited institutional autonomy; non-academic actors interfere extensively with decision-making.
2: Moderate autonomy. Universities exercise some institutional autonomy; non-academic actors interfere moderately with decision-making.
3: Substantial autonomy. Universities exercise institutional autonomy to a large extent; non-academic actors have only rare and minimal influence on decision-making.
4: Complete autonomy. Universities exercise complete institutional autonomy from non-academic actors.

Campus integrity

Question: “To what extent are campuses free from politically motivated surveillance or security infringements?”
Answers:
0: Completely restricted. Campus integrity is fundamentally undermined by extensive surveillance and severe intimidation, including violence or closures.
1: Severely restricted. Campus integrity is to a large extent undermined by surveillance and intimidation, at times including violence or closures.
2: Moderately restricted. Campus integrity is challenged by some significant cases of surveillance or intimidation.
3: Mostly free. Campus integrity is to a large extent respected, with only minor cases of surveillance or intimidation.
4: Fully free. Campus integrity is comprehensively respected; there are no cases of surveillance or intimidation.

You might want to compare the answers you might give to these questions to the score reported to get a sense for the validity (or not, from your perspective) of the expert scores.

Changes in Mongolia’s Score

Institutional Autonomy

What are we to make of the decline in Mongolia’s score then. As far as I am aware there have been no significant legislative changes to higher education/academic freedom in the past ten years. Am I missing something?

Yes, the sense that there are some challenges with the governance structure of Mongolian higher education institutions has been common for some years. This would be captured by the institutional autonomy variable. On this variable, Mongolia is scored at 0.53 compared to a global average of 0.24 (2024). The indicator for Mongolia has been declining to approach the global indicator. But are Mongolian universities significantly less autonomous in 2024 than they were in 2014? The score here goes from 1.53 to 0.53 over this period.

 

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Recall from the answer key above that Mongolia went from somewhere right between 2=moderate autonomy and 1= minimal autonomy  to somewhere between minimal autonomy and 0=no autonomy at all. When we look across the world, compared to many other nations, Mongolian higher education institutions have between minimal and no autonomy at all? Sure, that may apply to some appointments (though note that the formal governance structure of Mongolian universities is not dissimilar to that of the example of Canadian universities), but some academic hires at least are made by academic criteria, are they not? Some curricular decisions are made without even the threat of political interference, are they not? Cynically speaking, given that the budgets of state universities are almost entirely reliant on tuition payments, is there not some level of financial autonomy in that? And, even if none of these limited levels of autonomy exist, did they exist to a much greater extent 10 years ago?

I think of events recently that have highlighted the lack of institutional autonomy. The first example I can think of is the installation of D Badarch as president of MUIS in 2023. While Badarch seemed eminently qualified given his long service at UNESCO, many faculty members objected to the process by which he was appointed, i.e. by political fiat. He was removed as president a mere year later.

The other moment when I have come in contact with the lack of institutional autonomy is in the context of the International Congress of Mongolists in 2023 where there was significant unhappiness with the governance structure of that group. There certainly is a strong sense among Mongolian colleagues that universities are unable to act autonomously and that their research does not enjoy a lot of freedom. Note that almost all my contacts are with academics at state universities.

To me, the answer is relatively clear: I don’t think that institutions are significantly less autonomous now than they were ten years ago. To be sure, I am not saying that institutional autonomy is not important in assessing academic freedom for Mongolia, nor that institutions have a large degree of autonomy, but I am saying that I don’t see a lot of change over the past ten years when the indicator shows such change.

Freedom Indicators

What about the other indicators that make up the Academic Freedom Index then? Because I had been so puzzled by the significant decline in the Index, I wanted to be sure to speak to academic colleagues during a recent trip to Mongolia to compare my observations (nothing substantial has happened) to their experience of academic freedom. Here, I am referring to aspects captured by the three freedoms in the index, academic expression, research and teaching, and academic exchange.

When I probed colleague to ask “have you experienced any restrictions on your ability to choose topics of research, teach, etc.?”. I mostly got the answer that, “no” they had not experienced such restrictions. This confirmed my own sense (and also how I scored this variable myself). But that is not where the discussion ended.

Colleagues did refer to the fairly public dispute that National University’s Munkh-Erdene G is pursuing, but as far as I can tell, this centres on conditions of employment, course assignments, etc. not content of research or teaching.

If there don’t appear to be new substantive restrictions, some colleagues did mention rising expectations of conformity from unspecified public/bureaucratic actors. For example, some kind of compliance with Vision 2050 was mentioned, to potentially be “tested” in some fashion. I was a bit shocked by that as that document really primarily collected all kinds of strategic plan, agendas, etc. without shaping them into a coherent vision as it claims to have done. How would one even comply with such a document, never mind the ludicrousness of a notion of such compliance. But, this is a concern for academic freedom! Yet, it was only mentioned as a minor irritant, not something that had really begun to place restrictions on research and teaching, yet.

Broadly speaking, I thus came away with a reinforced notion of fairly limited substantial change in academic freedom aspects despite the notable decline in the index.

Index Contrary to my Sense of Academic Freedom. How could that Be?

Bad-vibes Bias

Assume for the moment that I’m right, meaning that the institutional autonomy of Mongolian institutions of higher education has not changed substantively over the past ten years. What could be going on in the index? The social scientific literature talks about something called bad-vibes bias. What is that bias? “experts have been increasingly negatively biased due to pessimism about the state of democracy” is how it is defined by Knutsen et al. (2024. “Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding.” PS: Political Science & Politics 57(2): 162–77. doi: 10.1017/S104909652300077X.) My fear is thus that fellow V-Dem coders for Mongolia are pessimistic about Mongolia or, I would argue, perhaps see Mongolian democracy in a more negative light than others (i.e., me) might.

However, Knutsen et al. and other analyses show that on the global level some of the fears about biases, including bad-vibes bias are unfounded. The V-Dem stewards have also taken a variety of methods and statistical measures against such biases. The V-Dem Methodology pages offer extensive discussion of various coding and statistical decisions.

But those analyses are global, not country-specific and as all country experts likely do, I’m inclined to think that my case is special (obviously, Mongolia is special!).

Obviously, challenges to institutional autonomy and other aspects of academic freedom will be much more visible, perhaps palatable, to colleagues who work at Mongolian institutions. But I do wonder whether the constraints on academic freedom are not being exaggerated a bit, particularly when I look at this on a global scale.

Have there been any dismissals of academics for their choice of research topic (freedom of research and teaching)? Have any academics been censured for publishing on particular topics or reaching and publicizing their conclusions (freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, freedom of academic and cultural expression)? I am honestly not aware of such cases, while examples of such decisions abound in some countries that are ranked higher than Mongolia in the Academic Freedom Index.

Perhaps, the bad vibes are being applied specifically to an examination of Mongolia, rather than responding to a more global trend?

Mongolia Pessimism

Another source of the declining index contrary to my observations, could be that coders are adopting a particular attitude toward Mongolia, still a variant of bad vibes, but perhaps due to the narrowness of the field of research on Mongolia and the limited “supply” of comparativists likely participating in the V-Dem coding.

I have long noticed that my assessments of Mongolian democracy have been more positive than many interlocutors based in Mongolia. Some of that may be my optimistic personality, but some of it I attribute to a comparative perspective differing from one that is focused internally and exclusively on domestic developments. As I said to colleagues during conversation in Ulaanbaatar when we were going through example questions and they answered 0 and 1 to some questions, “You are not North Korea!”. Yes, things may be troubling, but they are troubling in a context where you can talk about those concerns, that in itself being a significant (academic) freedom. So, I do think that a comparative perspective may lead me to underestimate some of the atmospheric changes that are happening in Mongolia compared to colleagues and potentially fellow V-Dem experts who might be more inward-looking. Presumably, that may be due to a greater portion of single-country experts for a country like Mongolia compared to other scores.

But, in the end…

Returning to earlier consideration of #academicfreedom in #Mongolia based on @vdeminstitute.bsky.social
mongoliafocus.com/2025/04/acad…
Important to keep in mind that 🇲🇳 continues to maintain much higher levels of academic freedom than neighbours!

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— Mongolia Focus (@mongoliafocus.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 5:30 PM

And, here’s another comparison: Türkiye which has been a prominent case of concern as well.

Since I continue to think abt #AcademicFreedom in #Mongolia, here’s the corresponding graph for 2019-2024, period of decline in the Academic Freedom Index components.
Note relatively (compared to 🇹🇷) even shape, pointing to, again relatively, high degree of academic freedom across all 5 indicators.

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— Mongolia Focus (@mongoliafocus.bsky.social) 13. Mai 2025 um 11:48