states

Create country-year/month/day panels consistent with the COW or Gleditsch & Ward lists of independent states. I mainly use this for merging different data sources:

1. Create a master template that reflects one of the independent states lists.
2. For each data source, normalize to a copy of the master template. Doing this by source makes it easier to identify and address issues like missing values or observation for non-independent states.
3. In the end, merge everything together. Since all the inputs are already normalized to a proper state panel list, there should be no issues.

What the package does:

1. It contains the Gleditsch and Ward (G&W) as well as the Correlates of War (COW) state system membership lists.

   library("states")
   
   data(gwstates)
   data(cowstates)

   Search them with sfind, this can be helpful for manual coding:

   sfind(260)[, 1:6]
   #>     list ccode code3c            country_name      start        end
   #> 45    GW   260    GFR German Federal Republic 1949-09-21 2017-12-31
   #> 299  COW   260    GFR German Federal Republic 1955-05-05 1990-10-02
   sfind("German")[, 1:6]
   #>     list ccode code3c               country_name      start        end
   #> 44    GW   255    GMY          Germany (Prussia) 1816-01-01 1945-05-07
   #> 45    GW   260    GFR    German Federal Republic 1949-09-21 2017-12-31
   #> 46    GW   265    GDR German Democratic Republic 1949-10-05 1990-10-02
   #> 297  COW   255    GMY                    Germany 1816-01-01 1945-05-08
   #> 298  COW   255    GMY                    Germany 1990-10-03 2016-12-31
   #> 299  COW   260    GFR    German Federal Republic 1955-05-05 1990-10-02
   #> 300  COW   265    GDR German Democratic Republic 1954-03-25 1990-10-02

2. You can use it to build a country-year template that matches either the COW or G&W state lists.

   countries <- state_panel("1991-01-01", "2010-01-01", by = "year")
   
   str(countries)
   #> 'data.frame':    3808 obs. of  2 variables:
   #>  $ gwcode: int  2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ...
   #>  $ date  : Date, format: "1991-01-01" "1992-01-01" ...

3. Visualize missing/non-independent cases in your data. See this related blog post for more details.

   data("polity")
   str(polity)
   #> 'data.frame':    17228 obs. of  3 variables:
   #>  $ ccode : num  700 700 700 700 700 700 700 700 700 700 ...
   #>  $ year  : num  1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 ...
   #>  $ polity: num  -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6 ...
   polity$date <- as.Date(paste0(polity$year, "-12-31"))
   
   plot_missing(polity, "polity", "ccode", "date", "year", statelist = "COW")

   

   
   # for the underlying data
   mm <- missing_info(polity, "polity", "ccode", "date", "year", statelist = "COW")

Install

The package is on CRAN and can be installed with:

install.packages("states")

Or to install from GitHub:

library("remotes")
remotes::install_github("andybega/states")

Citations

For the Gleditsch and Ward (G&W) state data:

Gleditsch, Kristian S. & Michael D. Ward. 1999. “Interstate System Membership: A Revised List of the Independent States since 1816.” International Interactions 25: 393-413.

For the Correlates of War (COW) state data:

Correlates of War Project. 2017. “State System Membership List, v2016.” Online, http://correlatesofwar.org