Overview

A Thousand Steps to Parliament traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to political representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over.   Mongolia has often been deemed an “island of democracy,” commended for its rapid adoption of free democratic elections in the wake of totalitarian socialism. The democratizing era, however, brought alongside it a phenomenon that Manduhai Buyandelger terms “electionization”—a restructuring of elections from time-grounded events into a continuous, neoliberal force that governs everyday life beyond the electoral period. In A Thousand Steps to Parliament, she shows how campaigns in Mongolia have come to substitute for the functions of governing, from social welfare to the private sector. Such long-term, high-investment campaigns depend on an accumulation of wealth and power beyond the reach of most women candidates. Given their limited financial means and outsider status, successful women candidates instead use strategies of self-polishing to cultivate charisma and a reputation for being oyunlag, or intellectful. This carefully and intentionally crafted identity can be called the “electable self”: treating their bodies and minds as pliable and renewable, women candidates draw from the same practices of neoliberalism that have unsustainably commercialized elections. A Thousand Steps to Parliament traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over, revealing an urgent need to grapple with the encroaching effects of neoliberalism in democracies globally.

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Reviews

“A Thousand Steps to Parliament is exemplary of political anthropology at its best. Using fine-grained ethnography, detailed historiography, and compelling prose, Buyandelger demonstrates the ways in which elections are so much more than technical exercises. The result is a wholly original and completely convincing analysis of electoral politics and the making of women’s electable selves. Buyandelger gifts us a set of concepts and methods for understanding postsocialist democracy that couldn't be more timely.” * Jessica Greenberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign * “In her splendid book, Buyandelger covers a wide range of subjects that are altogether fresh and new in the context of the English-language literature on Mongolia. With clear, concise language, she conveys new information about the actual practice of politics in Mongolia while also illuminating the actuality of gender politics—hitherto little studied with such attention and nuance.” * Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge *

"""By tracing the intricate and precarious paths to representation that women in politics in Mongolia must walk, A Thousand Steps to Parliament re-invents what it means to be a democracy in post-socialist contexts, dealing with a critical need to grapple with the loose ends of neoliberalism in our global political systems."" * Inner Asia * “A Thousand Steps to Parliament is exemplary of political anthropology at its best. Using fine-grained ethnography, detailed historiography, and compelling prose, Buyandelger demonstrates the ways in which elections are so much more than technical exercises. The result is a wholly original and completely convincing analysis of electoral politics and the making of women’s electable selves. Buyandelger gifts us a set of concepts and methods for understanding postsocialist democracy that couldn't be more timely.” * Jessica Greenberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign * “In her splendid book, Buyandelger covers a wide range of subjects that are altogether fresh and new in the context of the English-language literature on Mongolia. With clear, concise language, she conveys new information about the actual practice of politics in Mongolia while also illuminating the actuality of gender politics—hitherto little studied with such attention and nuance.” * Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge *"

A Thousand Steps to Parliament is exemplary of political anthropology at its best. Using fine-grained ethnography, detailed historiography, and compelling prose, Buyandelger demonstrates the ways in which elections are so much more than technical exercises. The result is a wholly original and completely convincing analysis of electoral politics and the making of women's electable selves. Buyandelger gifts us a set of concepts and methods for understanding postsocialist democracy that couldn't be more timely. * Jessica Greenberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign * In her splendid book, Buyandelger covers a wide range of subjects that are altogether fresh and new in the context of the English-language literature on Mongolia. With clear, concise language, she conveys new information about the actual practice of politics in Mongolia while also illuminating the actuality of gender politics-hitherto little studied with such attention and nuance. * Caroline Humphrey, University of Cambridge *

Author Information

Manduhai Buyandelger is professor of anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of Tragic Spirits, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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