Democracy

Case 2

Mongolia constitutional deliberative polls: deliberation mandated before constitutional change

Author: Susan Lee

In December 2015, a stratified random sample of 317 Mongolians gathered in the capital city Ulaanbaatar to participate in a Deliberative Poll on major infrastructure projects proposed in the city master plan. The Ulaanbaatar Deliberative Poll, the first of its kind in Mongolia, initially came about through chance encounters between Gombojav Zandanshatar, a former Mongolian MP, Ulaanbaatar’s then-mayor Erdeniin Bat-Üül, and Jim Fishkin, the founder of Deliberative Polling. In 2015, the Deliberative Poll was commissioned and implemented by the Capital City Governor’s Office with support from the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab and The Asia Foundation.