Episode 23: Is Mongolia actually a democracy or is it just performing like one?
Mongolia ranks poorly on some of the world's most cited democracy indices. But what do those rankings actually measure—and do they tell the real story of how the country operates?
In this episode, we break down how international democracy indices score Mongolia. Are those scores misleading? And whether Mongolian leaders are using these benchmarks as genuine governance tools or political cover. We try answer all of those in this episode.
Three Universals “Three Universals of Indices“:
The index of the pointing variety
The index of the book variety
The index of the measuring variety
Pocketcast | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
50min
Hosts: Anand, Dolgion, Julian
Date Recorded: Mar 25 2026
Date Released: Apr 1 2026
Keywords: democracy | global indices | social science
Show notes:
Julian’s recent discussion of the uptick in VDem indices for Mongolia
Julian’s Mongolia Scorecard collecting Mongolia’s score/rank on many different indices
V-Dem Graphing Tools
V-Dem Methodology
Freedom House Freedom in the World
