Indefensible idea: America was never meant to be a democracy. That’s the argument Yascha Mounk grapples with in a March 2018 essay.

To some degree ... the unresponsiveness of America’s political system is by design. The United States was founded as a republic, not a democracy. As Alexander Hamilton and James Madison made clear in the Federalist Papers, the essence of this republic would consist—their emphasis—“IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share” in the government. Instead, popular views would be translated into public policy through the election of representatives “whose wisdom may,” in Madison’s words, “best discern the true interest of their country.” That this radically curtailed the degree to which the people could directly influence the government was no accident.

Of course, that doesn't mean you have to be happy about it.

What's next: Taking the three countries in reverse order, in the United States the census is likely to stay in disarray for the foreseeable future. The agency in charge of it doesn’t even have a printer lined up for its paper forms. More important, once an issue becomes politicized in the U.S., it’s not likely to normalize on its own. Even once issues like what questions are on the survey are resolved, partisans will have reason to object to the way the census is eventually conducted. In Zimbabwe, the autocrats’ dilemma is that any further violence will come at a cost to legitimacy, but it may need to cow its opponents to stay in control. Either way, the odds of a reborn democracy are slim. And as for Cambodia, a sign of things to come is how closely the once-independent press has aligned with the government. Rather than acting as a check on power, The Phnom Penh Post is questioning the defeated opposition. What to do about that opposition now, an editorial asked? The ominous answer: “A democracy must protect itself against what threatens it.”

What to Expect

Notes on the news to come

Science

Next week, NASA will launch a research probe the size of a car toward the sun. Scientists hope it will help them uncover a number of mysteries about the star. Among them: Why is the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun, hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun? “It's a bit like if you walked away from a campfire and suddenly got much hotter,” said one scientist. To find the answer, scientists plan to, in effect, walk back into the campfire. —Karen Yuan

National

Summer backpackers will rejoice as large swaths of Yosemite National Park are slated to reopen to the public on Sunday. Significant areas of the park have been closed since the Ferguson Fire ripped through Yosemite Valley in July, producing large amounts of smoke. This has been the longest closure at Yosemite since 1977, and it has dealt a significant blow to park tourism. Summer is the park’s busiest time of the year, with more than 30 percent of Yosemite’s 4 million annual visitors coming in July and August. Over the past few weeks, Half Dome, perhaps the park’s most recognizable landmark, has “completely disappeared” behind a wall of thick, black smoke. —Caroline Kitchener