The term ‘social order’ is used in two senses. In the first sense, it refers to a structure or a system that forms, maintains, and enforces certain patters of relations and behaviors. For example, this would include the ancient, the feudal, and the capital social order, as well as the democratic, market economy social order being formed in Mongolia.
In the second sense, ‘social order’ refers to the opposite of social chaos or disorder. It refers to a social stability based on the existing social order accepted and maintained by members of society.
Social order is an enabler of socio-economic development and the prosperity of people’s livelihoods.
Maintaining social order
Maintaining social order means that the people abide by the set of laws a country has. It is one of the four primary duties of the state. The other three duties include protecting national security, providing public services, and making economic decisions.
Ensuring social order plays an important role in daily lives of people. In order to have social order, everyone needs to follow the law, and anyone who breaks it must be held accountable. The laws must uphold human rights and freedom and apply to everyone equally regardless of their race, wealth, family origin or religion. Only the government must have the exclusive right to enforce the laws of a country in its territory.
Firstly, the state has the duty to provide public services to everyone including the rich and the poor. Examples of this type of services include firefighting, police, and public transportation. The government doesn’t have the right to restrict anyone’s freedom to obtain education or get medical services.
Another duty of the state is protecting national security. In other words, they need to ensure that the country is protected from foreign threats. The military protects the country from overt threats while intelligence looks after covert threats. The police make urgent responses to criminal activities.
The other duty of the state is making economic decisions that impact on businesses in their operations including conducting sales and obtaining loans. The government makes those decisions working together with financial experts, economic advisors, and business leaders. These decisions often have a detrimental effect on the overall economic progress of the country as well as loan opportunities that businesses and people would have. For example, the central bank sets the interest rate of loans, and the government can issue bonds in domestic and international markets.
The state of social order depends on how well developed the laws are and how well they are enforced and complied with. Social order can change subject to the availability and quality of public services, guarantee of national security, and consequences of economic decisions.
Mongolia’s social order
In 1992, Mongolia’s first parliament had an irregular session and approved the policy direction of state activities aimed at ensuring social order.
At the time, the parliament set out to establish a social order where the law is respected and abided by at all times and in all parts of social life, and revised all relevant laws in accordance with the constitution. They said that the desired social order would be established “by taking a comprehensive set of economic, social, and legal measures aimed at restoring the traditions of the state, ensuring the law is abided by in all spheres including political, economic, and social, and fighting crime and violations of law.”
Now that 26 years have passed, let’s have a look at whether we’ve successfully established our social order. For one, we have plenty of laws in effect today. According to the Ministry of Justice and Internal Affairs, Mongolia has 449 independent laws and 2,472 parliamentary decrees as well as 369 laws through international agreements and conventions. Approximately 300 of those independent laws actively regulate social relations. In addition, there are a total of 976 registered decisions relating to administrative norms that have to be complied with by the public.
This begs the question of why we are increasingly seeing more corruption, crimes, and traffic accidents every year. The reason lies in the fact that Mongolians are currently unable to follow and enforce the laws and rules that were set. People think that they don’t need to follow the law while the government is not able to hold those who broke the law accountable. The Mongolian government is rotten with corruption, losing its ability to enforce accountability.
Public services, especially medical, education, public transportation, and infrastructure, have become obsolete, and have almost reached the point where they break our social order. For example, the endless traffic jams have turned into a major source of frustration testing the resilience and patience of people day in and day out. Freeing up the central road to make way for government officials is fueling the problem.
The protection of public security is also under threat. People have increasingly been consuming more medication while one out of three is counterfeit. Customs is turning a blind eye when thousands of trucks cross the border carrying coal without documentation. We aren’t even touching the topic of food security here.
For many years the economic decisions made by the government have lacked economic analysis and focused only on serving the interests of a specific group of people. The full reports of loans named after khaans have still not been made available. Besides a few people being questioned on the matter, there is complete silence. Instead of fighting corruption, the authorities are fighting the head of the Independent Authority Against Corruption. Under the name of price setting, specific groups are making gains illegally. The mining sector is now controlled by ‘ninjas’ instead of the government.
In order to maintain social order, laws must be enforced, and justice has to be established. One hundred and seventy years ago French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat wrote “The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”
2018.09.12
Trans. by B.Amar