ABSTRACT
A red thread running through this chapter is the importance of the interaction between politics and institutional design for democratic outcomes. The continued survival of the young semi-presidential democratic regime in Mongolia is closely linked to the positive role played by the former incumbent authoritarian forces, the former communist party, as well as other new political parties in the democratic transition process. Mongolia has known periods of divided government and of serious disagreements between the president and parliament. So far, however, political leaders have been able to weather these disagreements while remaining within the constitutional rules of the game. This is not to say that all is well in Mongolia, unfortunately. Though the formal trappings of electoral democracy have survived unscathed thus far, government accountability appears to be declining in a context of rising corruption and political co-optation of the former opposition to the ex-communists.
