The Educational Reform as Incomplete Institutionalization

Institutional Continuity and Implementation Gaps in Post-Socialist Mongolia

Abstract

This study examines why repeated education reforms in post-socialist Mongolia have failed to achieve institutional sustainability and quality improvement. Moving beyond narratives of policy failure, the study conceptualizes this stagnation as incomplete institutionalization driven by path dependency and institutional continuity rooted in the socialist era. A qualitative case study design was employed, utilizing thematic analysis on in-depth interviews with three key decision-makers in Mongolian education collected in 2018. Through a neo-institutional lens, the study identifies three structural dynamics shaping education reform: (1) the persistent path dependency of socialist governance; (2) a severe decoupling, or implementation gap, between policy reforms and school-level practices; and (3) the superficial formalization of quality assurance (QA) systems without genuine internalization. Furthermore, teachers' passive responses are reinterpreted as accumulated “institutional helplessness” rather than individual capacity deficits. By establishing these 2018 findings as a historical baseline, this study lays the groundwork for longitudinal comparisons of post-2023 education law reforms. Ultimately, it contributes to comparative education and neo-institutional research by reconceptualizing post-socialist reform as a complex, incomplete process of institutionalization rather than a mere matter of policy design.