Polity columns on WHEP outputs

Shared description of the reporting-polity columns that WHEP's area-keyed outputs attach. Documented once and inherited, because many functions emit these and one copy of the description per function is how half of them come to say something different.

Polity columns

Every area-keyed output carries the polity its area_code resolves to in that row's year:

• polity_area_code: The numeric key rows are AGGREGATED on, for the matrix workflows. It is a bucket, not an identity: use reporting_polity_code to say which territory a row belongs to.

• reporting_polity_code: The polity itself, e.g. ESP-1846-1914. It is year-aware, so the same area_code resolves to different polities in different years, which is the point of the crosswalk.

• reporting_polity_name: Its name. It can differ from the area's own name where the area folds into an aggregate.

• reporting_polity_has_geometry: Whether the polity has a polygon in the WHEP polity database, for callers that need to map or intersect it. FALSE is a documented gap upstream, not an error.

Rows whose area_code resolves to no polity keep the columns with NA rather than being dropped, so a gap is visible instead of silent.

Rows before the back-cast anchor year resolve to the polity live in that anchor year rather than to the polity live in the row's own year, because WHEP's pre-anchor series are back-cast onto the anchor-year territory. See add_polity_code() for the reasoning. Where that polity is not live in the row's own year – 41.5% of the pre-1961 (area, year) cells – add_polity_code() says so as mapping_status == "backcast_anchor", and polity_coverage_gaps() reports it as gap_kind == "backcast_anchor". These columns do not say so either way.

A row whose year no mapped period covers is resolved to the NEAREST period of the same area instead, so reporting_polity_code can name a polity that did not exist in that row's year – FAOSTAT bucket 206 "Sudan (former)" keeps reporting after SUD-1956-2011 ends, and its post-2011 rows carry that code. These columns do not say so: add_polity_code() reports such a row as mapping_status == "out_of_span", and that column is dropped here so that adding it does not change the schema of every area-keyed output at once. polity_coverage_gaps() reports the stand-in rows of a built table, and options(whep.polity_mapping_status = "flag") (or "status") carries the signal on the outputs themselves. Both are opt-in; the default is no extra column.