Mongolia once seemed an unlikely candidate for democratic reform, but while its two mighty neighbors are allowing authoritarian tendencies to diminish rule of law, impoverished Mongolia has persisted in building a more accountable government, says an appreciative report in The Christian Science Monitor. Calling it one of the most underreported stories of 2009, the article shows Mongolia is forging ahead with reforms aimed at making its society more open and less subject to the endemic corruption that has plagued many former communist states.

But progress has come with some difficulty. When the Soviet Union cut off subsidized trade and economic aid in 1990, Mongolia’s gross domestic product dropped by as much as a third. Food shortages followed. Prices skyrocketed. Agricultural and industrial output fell drastically. During a visit in mid-1992, the writes says, he discovered that two well-meaning but young and inexperienced Mongolian reformers had lost nearly all of the country’s foreign exchange in a series of currency dealings that went sour.

Mongolia has managed to foster good relations with China and Russia as well as with the United States, Japan, and both North and South Korea. In the early 1990s, many feared that an ever more powerful China might dominate the country. Although China is clearly a big player in Mongolia’s trade and mining sectors, it has so far refrained from disrupting Mongolian politics. But things could still go terribly wrong. President Ts. Elbegdorj has warned that corruption could threaten much hoped-for gains from the mining sector. “Now we have some profit, some money from mining,” he said. “If you have bad government, it’s going to be a curse.”  Elbegdorj said that the key will be reform of the judicial system and an anti-corruption agency that can work more effectively, because “corruption is deep-rooted in this country”. He has set an ambitious goal of making the judicial system more open, accountable, and independent by 2011.