Power of the People’s Parties and a post-Soviet Parliament: Regional infrastructural, economic, and ethnic networks of power in contemporary Mongolia

Abstract

In 1994, the new Orkhon Province was created, transforming the status of the Soviet-established federal municipality Erdenet, a major copper-mining center responsible for much of the country’s export revenues and central to ongoing Mongolian–Russian relations. Rather than representing increased participation in national government for Erdenet residents, many of whom are members of transborder minority ethnicities with ties to remote parts of the country, the formation of the province has been controversial locally, as it has meant the introduction of provincial governors, de facto appointed by the Prime Minister. At the same time, the People’s Parties descending from the single state party of the socialist era have in fact been successful at maintaining their networks across the country, and often fielded successful candidates for seats representing Orkhon. Representatives have included the director of a large local construction firm who also held the post of director of foreign trade within the mining enterprise (2008 to 2012, 2016 to present), the son of the mining enterprise’s former General Director (2012 to present), and a politician long based in Ulaanbaatar but central to the MPRP (2016 to present). The situation demonstrates the tension in Mongolian governance between Ulaanbaatar-based centralization and vertical integration on the one hand (also pursued through attempts to privatize the mining enterprise) and the independence of constituencies integrated with regional infrastructural, economic, and ethnic networks built up through long histories of international imperial entanglements on the other.