Capítulo 3. Análisis y discusión de los resultados del perfeccionamiento técnico del
3.3 Ejercicios para el perfeccionamiento técnico del swing en un pelotero del
In the previous chapter, I outlined the conceptual framework for the thesis as state transformation and legal ordering in its global and transnational modes, situating the Mongolian case study
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within the broader literature on new constitutionalism. This literature is characterised by concern with
‘
the uneven emergence of a de facto constitutional governance structure for the world market (one that is intended to operate regionally,nationally and globally)’ (Cutler, 2015: 89), which primarily
serves to protect the preferences of capital investors (e.g., property rights, capital mobility, commercial dispute resolution forms, etc.,). New constitutionalism is concerned with institutional developments, as well as normative questions about the governance of the global political economy: ‘[it] asks what
values get promoted and who benefits from the institutional
arrangements promoting global economic integration’
(Schneiderman, 2015: 67, citing Strange, 1988: 18). I am particularly interested in the way that the preferences of foreign
investors have been ‘locked’ (Gill, 1998) into Mongolia’s national system of law and policy-making through a strategic combination of institutional mechanisms, financial incentives and anti-political pressures.
In this thesis, the recurring question underlying its methodology relates to the way that state-economic orders are instituted
politically and legally. When it comes to Mongolia’s extractive
economy, how has it been instituted in terms of political and legal action? Who or what facilitates the reorganisation of productive forces, or fails to prevent it? As a site of dominant political- juridical power, the state is a fundamental reference point in order to understand the process and implications of economic
change. More specifically, conceiving of the state as a ‘site of strategic action’ (Jessop, 1990: 10) is useful as a means of exploring various social conditions (political, legal, ideological) that shape the reorganisation of production because it emphasises the role of authoritative action. The focus on the state as the most privileged site of political-juridical power further
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emphasises the way in which alternative social futures are being actively closed off and ‘forgotten’ (Schneiderman, 2013: 35, 18). This is an important sub-text of this chapter and the two following, which seek to explain the manner in which particular state forms and economic organisation have come to dominate over alternatives.
The contemporary literature on constitutional or ‘constitution-
like’ (Schneiderman, 2008: 8; 2015: 67) processes and transnational forms of ordering within the global political
economy has proliferated within the context of a “Polanyian turn” in the study of law, institutions and ‘transnational markets’
(Joerges & Falke, 2011: 1). As Joerges & Falke (ibid: 2) put it, Karl
Polanyi’s ‘notion ofembeddedness’ critiques the understanding
of any organic, let alone harmonious, evolution of
modern economies and societies… The capitalist
economy is, instead, characterised as a product of deliberate, inherently contradictory, political action, with movement promoting a disembedding of the economy from social institutions, on the one hand, and counter-movements striving for protection against the destructive implications of such dis-embedment, on the other.
The role of the state in relation to the institutionalisation of the economy will be briefly outlined below, before moving on to the substantive discussion of the Mongolian case.
Karl Polanyi’s seminal work – The Great Transformation (1944/2001) – critiques the abstract conceptualisation of the market economy in neoclassical economics, epitomised in the work of Friedrich von Hayek. Polanyi carefully constructed an
historical account of the formation of a “self-regulating” market
economy in England, as well as a global financial system based on
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account provides ample and definitive evidence of the way that the state actively constructs and maintains the domain of the market economy through legal and political institutions, such as
guaranteeing the ‘continuity of titles to property’ upon which the
market system depends (ibid: 243). Polanyi understood the separation of political and economic spheres as a distinctive product of the historical institutionalisation of the ‘self-regulating
market’ (1944/2001: 74; Ebner, 2011: 22-23). In his words, ‘a
self-regulating market demands nothing less than the institutional separation of society into an economic and political
sphere’ (Polanyi, 1944/2001: 74). Polanyi emphasised the historically constructed nature of this apparent separation in order to denaturalise it, contra Hayek (1944/2001), for whom the formation of markets independent of the political sphere was a sign of civilisation and organic progress.
Crucially, Polanyi recognised the role of the state in the formation of a sphere of economic exchange based on price mechanisms, economic value and the law of contract, as well as the state’s potential to help ameliorate the social ‘dislocations’ associated
with the commodification15 of labour, the environment and money within the market framework of exchange (Polanyi, 1944/2001: 59-60, 71-80; Ebner, 2011: 21). Markets presume certain types of social relations, notably characterised by commercial motivations and contractual relationships (Ebner,
2011: 30). As Polanyi (1944/2001: 71) puts it, ‘a market economy
is an economic system controlled, regulated and directed by
market prices.’ He adds that,
A further group of assumptions follows in respect to the state and its policy. Nothing must be allowed to inhibit
15Commodification can be defined as ‘the process of transforming social relations and processes, things (e.g. life-forms, land, natural resources) or ideas
into commodities or good that can be bought and sold in capitalist markets’
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the formation of markets… Neither price, nor supply,
nor demand must be fixed or regulated; only such policies and measures are in order which help to ensure the self-regulation of the market by creating conditions which make the market the only organising power in the economic sphere (ibid).
In this sense, ‘markets are never fully disembedded, for they
always require some institutional scaffold to sustain their
operation’ (Ebner, 2011: 27; Polanyi, 1944/2001: 71). However, the social basis of that ‘institutional scaffold’ (Ebner, 2011: 27) is
crucial in terms of distinguishing what type of social relations the market is embedded in. For instance, while markets can be said to
always be ‘politically embedded in distinct legal rules and institutions’ (ibid), these legal rules and institutions, depending
on their location and motives, might reinforce rather the idea that
the economy should be ‘organised in separate [economic] institutions, based on specific [economic] motives and conferring
a special status’ (Polanyi 1944/2001: 60). This type of “embeddedness,” referring to the institutional architecture that
supports the functioning of a market economy, is essentially a
form of social ordering based on the market (ibid), where ‘rules
and norms institutionalise the competitive order of market
exchange’ (Ebner, 2011: 28).
Embeddedness, in the normative sense in which Polanyi uses the term, refers to the economy being embedded in non-economic social relations, which effectively disrupts the commodification of people, land and money. Thus, while markets do involve a
particular kind of sociality, Polanyi’s understanding of the “social”
is a specifically de-commodified notion, where relations are regulated by non-economic institutions and norms. As Ebner
argues (2011: 33), Polanyi’s connection between embeddedness and decommodification is a ‘crucial’ dimension of Polanyi’s
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transnational markets’: the description of the political-legal coordination of markets is part of a critique of the particular kind of social relations involved. In fact, as Schneiderman points out (2008: 4), Polanyi was one of the first to link the idea of liberal
constitutionalism with its function as a ‘device for securing uniformity and homogeneity in state practices’ for the purposes
of instituting a separate economic sphere.
The historical rendering of the instituted nature of the economy,
inspired by Polanyi’s approach, dovetails neatly with the working
definition of the state given in the first chapter, described as ‘an
ensemble of juridical-political institutions and regulatory capacities grounded in the territorialisation of political power’ (Brenner et al, 2003: 7). The idea of state power as an ‘ensemble’
helpfully breaks down the concept of the state as a unitary institution. For example, the power of the state is constituted by diverse forms of power (e.g., administrative, legislative, bureaucratic, authoritarian, democratic), political and economic constituents (e.g., voters, financiers) and mediated by different institutions. The following exposition of Mongolian history will examine the role of the state in relation to the organisation of the economy during three distinct periods (aristocratic pastoralist, communist-industrialist, democratic-market) in order to illuminate the way in which state-economic relations have shifted over time, with reference to geopolitical context, socio-political constitution and normative-juridical structure. I argue that, prior to state socialism in the twentieth century, the economic sphere was firmly entangled within political relations, but became
gradually ‘disembedded’ from that position. The industrialising impetus of the socialist state gradually distinguished the economy from the state, as will be demonstrated in due course, but it was only in the context of the post-socialist transition that the
creation of a “free” market economy (i.e., outside of the state’s
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foundation for the development of my argument that Mongolia’s
extractive transformation since the late 1990s has been consolidated institutionally through the protection of the mining
regime from national “political” influences that could challenge
the interests of transnational capitalists.
Before embarking on the next section, it must be stated at the outset of the substantive portion of this chapter that I am heavily indebted to the work of David Sneath and other political anthropologists for the analysis of early (pre-socialist) Mongolian statecraft. Favouring methods that examine the complexity of historical social relations, anthropological sources have been invaluable for deconstructing the developmentalist assumptions that have characterised both Western (capitalist) and Soviet (technological Marxist) renderings of Mongolian history in the twentieth century. This chapter is a re-reading of mostly secondary historical sources with regard to pre-socialist state forms, although I do work with primary legal and policy texts from the socialist and democratic periods in the latter part of the chapter. Aware of the paucity of literature by Mongolians about their history and the limitation of my Mongolian language ability, I only attempt a modest overview of state-economic nexus as relevant to my thesis, in order to show systemic trends.