Mongolia’s Foreign Policy and the Cost of Democratic Backsliding

Despite its poor geographical position, impoverishment, and lack of democratic heritage, Mongolia has proven to be a success story among post-communist states. While its neighbors in Central Asia have either struggled or failed to democratize, Mongolia has remained firmly committed to its democratization. How has a country with such an inauspicious start managed to perform so well? This paper aims to solve a piece of this puzzle by looking at its democratization from an international perspective. After nearly seventy years as a Soviet satellite, the end of communist rule and collapse of the Soviet Union opened a new era in Mongolia’s international relations and the adoption of its “third neighbor” policy. This policy aims to develop cooperation between Mongolia and highly-developed democracies in the West and East, especially the United States. From the perspective of Mongolia, this cooperation serves to both accelerate its development and alleviate its dependence on its two neighbors: Russia and China. In soliciting cooperation from the US, Mongolia has appealed to their shared ideological ground and Mongolia’s status as an “oasis of democracy” in an authoritarian neighborhood. This paper seeks to answer whether Mongolia’s appeals for cooperation from the US based on its status as a democracy have contributed to its successful democratization by making democratic backsliding more costly. On the basis of statistical data, government documents, and official statements this paper finds that Mongolia has substantially benefited from cooperation with the US through the receiving of significant development aid and the modernization of its armed forces. As shared values form the basis of the relationship, democratic backsliding on the part of Mongolia is likely to prove costly, reducing the appeal of authoritarian solutions to the country’s problems.