ABSTRACT
Since the post-socialist transition in the early 1990s, Mongolia’s mineral wealth has been consistently promoted as the key to the country’s economic development. Over the past 25 years, national policy-makers and legislators in Mongolia have sought to create a legal and institutional framework for mining to attract foreign investment, while also addressing developmental priorities around national income generation, redistribution, socio-environmental impacts and participatory decision-making for local communities. This chapter discusses the challenges of this ‘balancing act’ for the democratic state of Mongolia through an overview of key periods of legal and policy change in Mongolia’s mining regime and analyses the underlying socio-political catalysts for reform. Overall, I argue that the legal developments associated with Mongolia’s mining regime have a great deal to tell us about the dynamics of national state transformation in the global economy.
