Plus ça change

By Julian Dierkes

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” = The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I feel like I experience perpetual déjà vu (yes, this is turning into a French post) in discussing constellations of political actor. Many people seem to want to talk about the personalities involved in current politics and rely on this as a lens to understand democratization or backsliding. Yet, most of the constellations of actors are repeating patterns that have been seen before.

In part, I think this is due to the prominence of international actors who are on medium-term stays in Ulaanbaatar only (diplomats, donor organizations, etc.) and to whom these constellations are new. Mongolian analysts also participate in these discussions as the fragmented and personalistic nature of politics in Mongolia seems to point to a focus on the people involved.

Repeating Patterns

Having gone through many cycles of politicians over the past 20 years that I’ve been paying close attention to Mongolia, I have to ask, do we really deepen our understanding of the political system and of democratization by gossiping about the personal relationships between various actors. Did understanding N Enkhbayar’s decades-long feud with his own party (MPRP/MPP) help us understand anything about the political system in the late 2000s, through the 2010s? Did figuring Kh Battulga out tell us anything about the presumed decline of democracy that we seem to be seeing now? What about the N Enkhbold vs U Khurelsukh battle? And, for the debate that has been raging for the past several years, do we need to understand the relationship and/or rivalry between U Khurelsukh and L Oyun-Erdene, or now between Khurelsukh, Oyun-Erdene and N Uchral?

As you can probably tell by the tone of my question, I think that a focus on the personalities can be a distraction and a bit of an analytical trap that we as a community of analysts fall into.

Yes, of course, some positions in a political system come with greater power than others. Understanding how the individuals who occupy those positions think and how they relate to each other has to be an element of an understanding of contemporary developments. Those positions include decision-making powers as defined by the constitution, most prominently, the members of the National Security Council, president, prime-minister and speaker of the Great Khural. Various cabinet-secretaries have also played important roles in shaping policy agendas (such as they are). The leaders of political parties and of factions of political parties do not  hold constitutional power, but they also have a clear role to play.

Fragmentation of Power

However, there is that fundamental observation of a fragmentation of political power. This is a topic I have written about in the past, perhaps most explicitly in a 2021 post. I initially came to this observation by thinking about investments and corruption. Whenever boom times arrive in Mongolia, I tend to get calls from international investment advisors or potential investors to ask whom they need to know to push into a certain market. Often, investors will tell me, “I met the vice minister for … and they reassured me that they would help me enter this market.” My response is always, “that’s very nice, but there are many vice ministers”. That’s why some of the grand corruption charges in the context of large projects like Oyu Tolgoi never made much sense to me. What single politician was ever in a position over the past 20 years to actually make a project happen? There were always rivals within the party and in the political system who would oppose any initiative by any given individual and would be able to restrain the power of others. This is at heart of one of the puzzles of the past several years, i.e. even with super-majorities in parliament and now the presidency, the MPP does not seem to be able to get all that much done. And, the government has felt compelled to bring the DP and KhUN on-board in their grand coalition because it has been afraid of opposition. That is fragmentation of power in action! And that is a pattern that I’ve seen repeatedly over the past 20 years entirely irrespective of the people involved. Powerful-seeming actors come and go, but the pattern of fragmentation remains and provides some checks-and-balances on the domination by single individuals. Once-powerful-seeming individuals are still active, yet seem to be relegated to the sidelines: Su Batbold, S Bayar, N Enkhbayar, M Enkhbold in the MPP, but also Lu Bold, S Erdene, Ch Saikhanbileg, even Ts Elbegdorj are all examples of that.

Political Vacuousness

Another pattern is the emptiness of the various power struggles. Did Enkhbayar have a substantive disagreement with the rests of the MPRP? Have Battulga and Elbegdorj pursued different policies? Do Khurelsukh and Oyun-Erdene have different goals? Generally, no. In fact, one of the puzzles about actors like Enkhbayar, Battulga, and Khurelsukh especially is that it remains unclear to me why they are even in politics. Has one of the three of them actually had a political project? Can you name a general political idea that any of them have pursued to make the world or Mongolia a better place? No, 1 billion trees do not count for a political goal. So, when the individuals involved in today’s political struggles (not debates!), the impact on decisions is actually entirely unclear. If any of the speculation about various changes of government (oh, have we had a lot of speculation of that kind over the past 20 years!) ever came true, would any actual policies have changed?

Of course, it is this vacuousness and absence of any actual political goals that fuels a lot of the concern about these individuals. If my observation that neither Battulga nor Khurelsukh really have any kind of substantive agenda for the future of Mongolia, their apparent desire to run for second presidential terms is a concern, because it seems to be a desire to be in power for power’s sake. And, I think that’s why many debates are consumed with speculation about specific constellations of actors. Since we cannot engage with factions led by these kind of politicians about the substance of policies they might pursue, we are left to speculate about their power ambitions and what those ambitions might mean for democracy (generally, nothing good).

Speculation

So, I generally try to stay away from speculation about the future trajectory of “leaders”. Perhaps, that is an important role to play for someone who continues to observe the political scene over many years. “Remember M Enkhbold? Oh you don’t? So, don’t worry so much about Khurelsukh.” I am more interested in finding underlying patterns like the fragmentation of power, the absence of substance from political debates, or the persistent belief in single “best” solutions, sometimes justified as “pragmatism”.

Of course, that bears the risk, that one of these times, I will be wrong and some leader will actually emerge to become authoritarian or destroy democracy, and that is a real worry. But, that was a worry just as much eight or twelve years ago, as it is now.