From Consultation to Contention: Institutional Feedback Gaps, Social Capital, and the Decoupling of Citizen Voice in Mongolia’s South Gobi
Author (s)
Usukhbayar Vaanchig, Chimgee Dari, & Oyuntungalag Buyantur
Abstract
Mining conflict is usually recorded when disagreement becomes visible, and participation is the standard instrument for preventing it. Yet consultation and conflict frequently coexist. This study locates the mechanism in what happens after people speak, defining an institutional feedback gap as a condition in which opportunities for voice are not reliably connected to reasoned response, corrective action and communication of the outcome. The design is a convergent mixed-methods embedded case study of one South Gobi province combining three strands: the six statutory provisions naming a party to mining consultation; a survey of 244 herding households recording which of four participation positions each occupies, modelled as a three-stage cascade by continuation-ratio logistic regression with Firth penalization; and a comparative analysis of 150 participants yielding three grievance-response configurations, defined by institutional process rather than by locality. The strands converge. An occasion to speak arose for 82.0% of surveyed households, 57.5% of those spoke, and 13.9% of those were answered. Individual resources, engagement and associational infrastructure predict position at no stage; perceived company openness raises passage at every gate by 9.6 to 17.3 percentage points without stage-specificity, while perceived state responsiveness is inert at the first two gates and decisive at the last, at 15.0 percentage points. The statutory strand shows why: provisions creating access are permissive, those touching the decision are state-held and set no binding standard, and one deems failure to respond an approval. Bonding, bridging and linking ties determine whether voice reaches authority, not whether it is answered.
Key words: Mining Conflict, Institutional Feedback Gap, Social Capital, Citizen Participation, Means–Ends Decoupling, Grievance Mechanisms, Pastoralism, Mongolia.
| Title: | From Consultation to Contention: Institutional Feedback Gaps, Social Capital, and the Decoupling of Citizen Voice in Mongolia’s South Gobi |
|---|---|
| Author: | Usukhbayar Vaanchig, Chimgee Dari, & Oyuntungalag Buyantur |
| Journal Name: | Journal of Scientific Reports |
| Website: | http://ijsab.com/jsr |
| ISSN: | ISSN: 2708-7085 (Online), ISSN: 3079-9317 (Print) |
| Publisher | IJSAB International |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.58970/JSR.1248 |
| Media: | Online |
| Volume: | 15 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Acceptance Date: | 12/10/2026 |
| Date of Publication: | 15/10/2026 |
| PDF URL: | http://ijsab.com/wp-content/uploads/1248.pdf |
| Free download: | Available |
| Page: | 213-235 |
| First Page: | 213 |
| Last Page: | 235 |
| Paper Type: | Research paper |
| Current Status: | Published |
Cite This Article:
Vaanchig, U., Dari, C., & Buyantur, O. (2026). From Consultation to Contention: Institutional Feedback Gaps, Social Capital, and the Decoupling of Citizen Voice in Mongolia’s South Gobi, Journal of Scientific Reports, 15(1), 213-235. https://doi.org/10.58970/JSR.1248
About Author (s)
Usukhbayar Vaanchig, School of Economics and Business, Ulaanbaatar Erdem University, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Chimgee Dari, School of Engineering and Environment, Ulaanbaatar Erdem University, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4500-995X
Oyuntungalag Buyantur (Corresponding Author), School of Management, Mongolian University of Science and Technology, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2600-8698
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58970/JSR.1248
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