ICNRD 5 Mongolia

The Follow up to the Fifth ICNRD project will support the development and application of nationally-owned democratic governance indicators (DGIs) to assess the progress in democratization as improving the quality of democracy has become a practical need and a political demand in both new or restored and mature democracies. Today, as has been underlined at the ICNRD-5 discussions, a general commitment to the norms of democracy is no longer enough. The development of democracy assessment methodologies and various governance indicator exercises serve the idea of a systematic assessment of a country’s political life by the people in new or restored and mature democracies in order to answer the question: how democratic is it in practice? How far have we progressed and what needs to be done to strengthen democracy in the future? So far, it is only in the ICNRD-5 outcome documents that the governments of new or restored democracies along with their counterparts from mature democracies have expressed their willingness to develop nationally-owned DGIs databases “to be better able to monitor their progress in democratic and social development over time” (Ulaanbaatar Plan of Action: 3.1.c). Thus, the development of DGIs under this project will be the first attempt to produce a democracy assessment under the aegis of a governmental institution  (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia) with a multistakeholder participation in new or restored democracies.

Over the recent years, the increased demand to measure various aspects of democracy, human rights, and governance has led to a proliferation of indicator sources to measure the performance of governments, quality of institutions and public perceptions . Currently, some forty organizations (international and national, academic and non-academic) produce indicators assessing different aspects of governance using more than forty data sources that develop internationally comparable evaluations (vide Governance Indicators: A User’s Guide; DGG, BDP, UNDP and Eurostat, 2004 ).

As noted in the Mission Report by the delegation of experts from the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre that visited Mongolia in September 2004, most of the governance indicators (GIs) had been developed for inter-country comparisons and were not suited to policymakers in any given country. The report also cautions against an indiscriminate use of indicators that had been developed by donor agencies to measure the effectiveness, outcomes, and impact of their democracy assistance programs. But an analysis of methods used in developing GIs would be useful in identifying appropriate methods for developing nationally-owned indicators.

The OGC Mission reiterated the Plan of Action recommendation that indicators of democratic governance should be specifically tailored to the requirements of Mongolian policymakers and be responsive to priorities for reforms on the policy agenda, from the point of view of people, especially the poor and other disadvantaged groups. The OGC approach of working with two sets of indicators, core indicators , concerned with universal attributes of democracy, and hence relevant in all democratic countries, and satellite indicators, reflecting the specificities of each country, was commended by the Mongolian participants in the Mission’s wrap-up session representing the Government, academia, and civil society.

The development of DGIs in Mongolia is expected to become a pilot exercise also in its explicit emphasis on democratic governance as compared to other GIs projects. The DGIs will cover all aspects of participatory and representative democratic governance.

It should also be noted that during the past fifteen years, Mongolia has not had a single project to assess the overall quality of its democracy with the participation of all national stakeholders. The development of DGIs will benefit the key stakeholders in democracy and development such as the Government, the Parliament, and civil society who will share their experiences and solutions for consolidating democracy. The development of nationally-owned indicators will also contribute to a better understanding of challenges of democracy consolidation in new or restored democracies by the international community at large thus updating and refining the democracy support strategies.

The ultimate beneficiaries of the DGI development will be the citizens of Mongolia and participating countries, who will benefit from a comprehensive and systematic democracy assessment to strengthen the democratic process and human rights through the partnership between the Government and Civil Society.

Objectives:

The purpose of developing nationally-owned DGIs under this project is to

* provide an instrument for assessing the state of democracy by the national stakeholders in an all-inclusive process;
* help enhance the national capacity to identify the strengths and weaknesses of current democratic practice in a systematic manner;
* pilot a model of developing nationally-owned DGIs with the participation of government, parliamentarians, and civil society and share the piloting experience in and outside the ICNRD movement;
* raise public consciousness about democracy challenges and opportunities and give a focus to popular concerns about politics of democracy;
* provide a framework to national consensus building with the engagement of all stakeholders leading to democracy consolidation;
* contribute to democracy consolidation in Mongolia by initiating, designing, and coordinating a multistakeholder process of DGI development;
* support linking the process of DGI development as part of the follow-up to ICNRD-5 activities with similar activities conducted at other multilateral fora;

Development of DGIs

The development of DGIs will have the following phases:

•  Preparation (training of/methodology seminar for a Mongolian Research Institution and stakeholders)

•  Data Collection and Analysis

•  Formulation of Indicators

•  Presentation of Indicators

•  Public Promotion and Advocacy

The development of nationally-owned DGIs is expected to have two major sections: (A) the development of core DGIs and (B) the development of satellite DGIs. The two sections of this activity will proceed simultaneously.

(A) Development of Core DGIs

The core DGIs will cover the fundamental inalienable attributes of democratic governance against which Mongolia’s level of democracy is to be assessed. The core DGIs will reflect the basic values (mediating values) or components used for democratic governance (DG) measurement and analysis by other organizations and are recommended as the basic methodology tool by the Project staff for conducting the development of DGIs. The recommended assessment methodology will be the International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) Democracy Assessment Framework as defined and described in the IDEA Handbook on Democracy Assessment with the results presented in the IDEA State of Democracy (Democracy Assessments in Eight Nations around the World). The selected Research Institution (RI) is expected to receive the methodology training by the IDEA expert/experts to prepare for the development of DGIs and also to review the literature on qualitative and quantitative measurements/indicators of democracy and governance and feed the useful methodology aspects into its DGIs development if deemed necessary. The RI will also look into the DGIs project under the UNDP Oslo Governance Center for possible linkage with measurements/indicators of DG socio-economic dimensions and internationally determined targets (Millennium Development Goals as an example). The latter exercise will also contribute to the development of satellite DGIs in section (B). The development of DGIs will require the use of all available national and international data on Mongolia’s political, economic, and social development.

•  Development of Satellite DGIs

The development of nationally-owned DGIs includes a national all-inclusive process of consultations and public advocacy and a reflection of national specificity in the country’s democratization process. The satellite indicators will be identified as a result of analyzing (a) Mongolia’s democratization as a transition process from an authoritarian (communist) to a democratic (post-communist) society with a simultaneous transition from a centrally planned to a market based economy and (b) Mongolia’s democratization and governance issues against the backdrop of a nomadic civilization, its geopolitical situation, the specifics of its constitutional arrangement, the spatial distribution of the population, the social profiles of Mongolia’s urban population and herders, socio-economic indicators, gender and education aspects and others. The satellite issues will necessarily be determined by a specific methodology to be produced by the RI in consultation with the IDEA expert/experts. As soon as the satellite issues are determined based on the RI methodology, the satellite indicators will be formulated. The formulation and assessment of satellite indicators will follow the core DGIs assessment general framework.

National Ownership Process

The national ownership of developing DGIs has two aspects: (1) the exercise is to be conducted by a Mongolian research institution with the assistance of the IDEA and (2) the ownership is to be national in scope and participatory in nature. The second requirement will be ensured by the creation of a DGI national committee with a representative body of members providing political legitimacy to the project and its outcomes. The Committee is expected to play an important role in evaluating and promoting the project outcomes. Public consultations may be held as part of the process of developing satellite indicators if deemed necessary by the RI. At the final stage, the DGIs will be presented and discussed at a national conference convened specifically for this purpose.

International Experience Sharing

Mongolia’s DGI development framework and experience will be described and analyzed in a specially commissioned study to be distributed at the international level in and outside the ICNRD community. Mongolia’s experience is expected to provide a pilot model/program for other new or restored democracies. The experience accumulated could be shared in DGI projects in other ICNRD countries with the financial assistance of foreign and international donors. The highlights of this experience will be presented by Mongolia at other democracy promoting international events and at the ICNRD-6 in Qatar in November 2006.