Non-Western Encounters with Democratization offers diverse perspectives on democracy and transition spanning the Middle East and North Africa to East Asia. This unique collection of essays, drawn from contextually rich case studies, presents readers with a variety of non-western encounters with democracy and provides important insights into the dramatic political and social transformations in these regions over the past decades. The book offers a deeper understanding of democratization and challenges the image of western democracy as a universal model to which non-western societies aspire.