At Democratic Market, every product is evaluated not only for its technical specifications and price but for the democratic integrity of its supply chain. We apply the EIU Democracy Index — the world's most rigorous benchmark for political systems — to determine which countries and manufacturers can appear in our catalogue.
The EIU Democracy Index: Democratic Market's standard
The Economist Intelligence Unit publishes its Democracy Index annually, evaluating 167 countries across five dimensions: electoral process and pluralism, government functioning, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Scores range from 0 to 10. Only countries scoring above 6.0 can supply products to the Democratic Market catalogue.
A country scoring below 6.0 presents structural deficiencies in at least two of those five dimensions. That may mean predetermined electoral outcomes, restricted civil liberties, absence of independent press, or state control of the economy. When you buy a product manufactured in that environment, you are indirectly financing that system.
Why manufacturing origin matters more than ever
In 2026, global supply chains are undergoing one of their largest transformations in decades. Tensions between democratic and authoritarian blocs have broken the consensus that globalisation was ideologically neutral. European and North American governments have introduced legislation — including the EU's corporate sustainability due diligence directive and the US Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act — to exclude products from zones with documented human rights violations.
Democratic Market goes a step further. While existing law focuses on forced labour as the exclusion criterion, Democratic Market applies the broader EIU standard: if the manufacturing country does not reach a minimally functional democracy overall, the product does not enter the catalogue, regardless of whether specific forced labour has been documented at that particular factory.
What a democratic supply chain means
A democratic supply chain is not simply one free from child labour or direct worker exploitation, though those are necessary conditions. It goes further: it means workers producing the product have the right to organise, to report abuses to an independent judiciary, and to vote freely for the governments that regulate their working conditions. It means that data generated by using the product is processed in jurisdictions with effective legal protection of citizens against the state.
The impact of your purchasing decisions
It may seem excessive to link the purchase of an everyday product to global geopolitics. It is not. Foreign trade is the primary source of foreign currency income for most authoritarian economies. Exports sustain the state budgets that finance repression, propaganda, and external power projection. Every euro a European consumer spends on products manufactured in authoritarian regimes contributes, in aggregate, to financing those systems.
How Democratic Market evaluates each product
When Democratic Market analyses Electric scooter 2026: 90% come from China — and the exceptions that exist, the result is not just a technical data sheet. It is an evaluation of the entire chain that makes that product possible: the countries, political systems, labour conditions, and legal jurisdictions involved. That chain is as much a part of the product as its specifications. Use that information.
