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Polities

Source: R/table_mappings.R
polities.Rd

Periodized WHEP polity database imported from the whep-polities repository.

Usage

polities

Format

An sf data frame where each row corresponds to one territorial polity over a continuous time interval. Key columns include:

  • polity_code: Stable WHEP polity identifier, usually PREFIX-start_year-end_year.

  • polity_name: Human-readable polity name.

  • start_year, end_year: Validity interval for the row. start_year is inclusive; end_year is exclusive at a succession and inclusive at the open end. Exclusive at a succession, so F51-1947-1993 Czechoslovakia covers 1947-1992 and 1993 belongs to CZE-1993-2025 and SVK-1993-2025, and 2014 belongs to "RUS-2014-2025" rather than to "RUS-1991-2014" (filtering year <= end_year returns both epochs and double-counts every boundary year). Inclusive at the open end, so 2025 still belongs to "RUS-2014-2025", because no later interval of that polity follows it and a uniformly exclusive read would leave the current year with no polity at all. Openness is absence of a successor, not a comparison against the last year in the table. 258 live polities have no successor, 246 of them end in 2025, and no live polity ending in 2025 carries one, so the two readings agree on this vintage; the successor test is the one that keeps agreeing when the horizon moves. The distinction is not decoration: 256 of the 781 rows end in 2025 but only 253 are open, because three are succeeded there (BLZ-1800-2025, CAN-1948-2025 and IRQ-1921-2025, all retired or superseded), and opening those too would count the terminal year twice.

  • iso3_code, iso3c: ISO3 code where one exists. iso3c is retained as a compatibility alias.

  • wiki_status: Upstream review state. "retired" and "superseded" mark a DEAD row, kept so a code already held in older output stays resolvable, but never a resolution target: polity_area_crosswalk excludes them, so resolve through it rather than through this table.

  • polygon_status: Polygon status in whep-polities ("assigned", "proxy", "missing", or "excluded").

  • polygon_feature_year, polygon_feature_date: The vintage of the source feature the polygon was taken from. polygon_feature_date arrived with the #835 upstream re-sync and is populated on 3 rows, where upstream recorded a day rather than only a year.

  • has_geometry: Logical flag indicating whether the geometry is non-empty.

  • geom: Multipolygon geometry.

Source

~/whep-polities/data/final/polities_database.gpkg.