Patron-client relationships and market-based governance in the Mongolian Gobi
| presentationType | Conference presentation |
|---|---|
| collections | |
| date | 2023-03-16 |
| dateAdded | 2024-08-07T03:18:50Z |
| abstractNote | This paper comments on the emergence of market-based governance systems in the Mongolian Gobi, involving patron-client relationships between wealthy local actors and nomadic herders. Over the past decade, international development organizations and the Government of Mongolia have introduced initiatives to encourage the provision of public services, including resource management and livestock commodities trade management, through collective action institutions. Yet the herder groups and cooperatives envisaged by these interventions have often failed to encourage horizontal solidarity and collaboration, instead serving to institutionalize existing patron-client relationships with local elites. In this paper, drawing on recent research on cashmere commodity chains, I explore some of the conditions supporting these political formations. First, I suggest that the dispersed and mobile nature of the desert population in Mongolia's Gobi is conducive to a non-territorial governance regime, creating advantages for delocalized market-based structures. Second, I argue that positive cultural value associations with individual wealth accumulation present an appearance of greater legitimacy in market institutions, in contrast to public or elected bodies in which clientelism can be represented as corrupt. I consider the implications of these forms of patron-client governance as bringing Mongolian desert herders under the power of distant, unknown, and unelected economic actors. |
| place | Oxford, UK |
| meetingName | 6th Oxford Interdisciplinary Desert Conference |
| version | 196 |
| title | Patron-client relationships and market-based governance in the Mongolian Gobi |
| itemType | presentation |
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| dateModified | 2024-08-07T05:08:41Z |
| key | E88PRRXN |