manystates is a data package within the many universe of
packages. It contains an ensemble of
datasets currently available on states in the world, including
information on states’ beginning and, where applicable, end dates,
regime characteristics, and state leaders. An important aim of
manystates is to record and include states as far back in history as
possible. The package is geared towards global governance research, but
can also be used by anyone interested in state actors across time.
Please also check out
{manydata} for more
information about the other packages and tools to handle data from the
many universe of packages.
We’ve made it easier than ever to install and start analysing global governance data in R. Simply install the core package, manydata, as follows, and then you can discover, install and update various ‘many packages’ from the console.
# install.packages(remotes)
remotes::install_github("globalgov/manydata") # this installs our core package, the only one you need to do independently
manydata::get_packages() # this prints a list of the publicly available data packages currently available
manydata::get_packages("manystates") # this downloads and installs the named packageOnce you have installed {manydata}, you can see the different
databases and datasets included in the {manystates} package using the
following function.
manydata::data_contrast("manystates")Working with ensembles of related data has many advantages for robust analysis. Just take a look at our vignettes here.
The many universe of packages is aimed at collecting, connecting and correcting network data across issue-domains of global governance.
While some ‘many packages’ can and do include novel data, much of what they offer involves standing on the shoulders of giants. ‘many packages’ endeavour to be as transparent as possible about where data comes from, how it has been coded and/or relabelled, and who has done the work. As such, we make it easy to cite the datasets you use by listing the official references using the function above, as well as the package providers for their work assembling the data by using the function below.
citation("manystates")##
## To cite manystates in publications use:
##
## J. Hollway. manystates: States for manydata. 2021.
##
## A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
##
## @Manual{,
## title = {manystates: States for manydata},
## author = {James Hollway},
## year = {2021},
## url = {https://github.com/globalgov/qStates},
## }
manydata also makes it easy to contribute in lots of different ways.
If you have already developed a dataset salient to this package, please reach out by flagging this as an issue for us, or by forking, further developing the package yourself, and opening a pull request so that your data can be used easily.
If you have collected or developed other data that may not be best for
this package, but could be useful within the wider universe of
many packages, manypkgs
includes a number of functions that make it easy to create a new
many package and populate it with clean, consistent global governance
data.
If you have any other ideas about how this package or the manydata packages universe more broadly might better facilitate your empirical analysis, we’d be very happy to hear from you.