<p>This article challenges the conventional approach of using the competitiveness of elections as the defining factor in judging the extent to which a ‘hybrid’ regime deviates from either dictatorship or democracy, and investigates whether elements of democracy can not only co-exist with authoritarian regimes but enable them. A case study of Belarus compares these approaches with an alternative method of assessing democratic health: the extent to which civil society gets co-opted by the state.</p>