---
name: wp-tables-figures
description: Use when building tables and figures for a World Politics manuscript so exhibits are self-contained, accessible, and placed correctly relative to the word limit. At World Politics tables, figures, and appendixes are excluded from the 12,500-word count, but online supplementary material is capped at fifteen pages, so exhibits must still earn their place. Designs exhibits; it does not run the analysis.
---

# Tables & Figures (wp-tables-figures)

Exhibits are where an expert reviewer checks whether a cross-case result is real. At World Politics
**tables, figures, and appendixes are excluded from the 12,500-word count** — but **online
supplementary material cannot exceed fifteen pages**, so you cannot dump everything into an appendix.
Every exhibit must pull its weight and reproduce from the deposited Dataverse package.

## When to trigger

- Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive/comparative exhibit
- Deciding what belongs in the article vs. the (≤ 15-page) online supplement
- A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or non-self-contained
- Visualizing cross-national variation, durations, or comparative-historical sequence

## Principles

1. **Self-contained.** A reader should understand each exhibit from its title, axis/column labels, and
   note alone. State units, the cases/sample, N, time span, data source (e.g., V-Dem, COW), and what
   the estimate is.
2. **Figures over dense tables for effects.** Coefficient/forest plots, marginal-effects and
   predicted-probability plots, event-study and RD plots, and survival curves communicate magnitude
   and uncertainty better than a wall of coefficients. Show intervals.
3. **Accessible.** Colorblind-safe palettes; legible in grayscale; no chartjunk, no 3D. Reviewers and
   readers must parse it quickly.
4. **Main text vs. online supplement.** Keep the few exhibits that carry the argument in the article;
   move balance tables, full specifications, and robustness grids to the **online supplement (≤ 15
   pages)** — used judiciously for material central to the argument, not as an overflow dump.
5. **Reproducible.** Each exhibit is generated by the master script; numbers match the deposited
   World Politics Dataverse package exactly.

## Comparative + IR exhibits
- Maps for cross-national/spatial variation; network diagrams for alliances, trade, or diffusion.
- Survival/hazard plots for regime duration or conflict onset; event-study plots for shocks.
- For comparative-historical work: timelines, causal-process diagrams, and **evidence tables** linking
  each claim to its source (documents, interviews) — these double as qualitative transparency.
- QCA truth tables / set-relation plots where the design is set-theoretic.

## Anti-patterns

- Tables that require the prose to be intelligible (not self-contained)
- Reporting significance stars with no effect size or interval
- Treating the ≤ 15-page supplement as an unlimited dumping ground (it is capped)
- Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for colorblind readers
- Exhibit numbers/values that don't match the deposited code output

## Exhibit-objection patterns and the venue-specific fix

A World Politics referee uses exhibits to check whether a cross-case result is real, so objections
track magnitude, transparency, and travel.

| Referee objection | The fix this skill drives |
|-------------------|----------------------------|
| "Table needs the prose to be read" | Make it self-contained: units, cases/sample, N, span, source in title and note |
| "Process-tracing claim not auditable" | Add an evidence table linking each claim to its document/interview source |

## Worked micro-example (illustrative)

A hypothetical study of **alliance reliability and deterrence** has one dense 14-column regression
table. The redesign carries the argument better:

```text
Before: 14-column coefficient table + stars, no case labels
After:  forest plot across 6 variants, 95% intervals, N = 1,940 dyad-years, COW + ATOP
Supplement: full table + balance checks → Online Appendix (within 15-page cap)
```

The figure shows magnitude and uncertainty at a glance while the full table stays auditable in the
supplement. (Numbers illustrative; verify the cap on the submission page.)

## Exhibit pass for World Politics

Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the political mechanism, case scope, evidence warrant, and comparative or international implication; then test whether the manuscript addresses comparative and international politics reviewers who expect a big political question, credible evidence, and theory that travels beyond one case.

- **Primary move:** For every table or figure, state the object, sample/case base, uncertainty display, and one sentence the exhibit proves for this venue.
- **Decision ledger:** return `claim / evidence / blocker / next edit` rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
- **Sibling comparison:** compare against International Organization for IR institutions/political economy, Journal of Politics for wider political science, Comparative Political Studies for comparative breadth; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
- **Verification floor:** before submission-ready advice, re-open `resources/official-source-map.md` for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

## Output format

```
【Main exhibit】what it shows + why a figure/table
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units/cases/source present? [Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Article vs supplement】split decided; supplement ≤ 15 pages respected? [Y/N]
【Reproducible?】generated by master script, matches Dataverse package? [Y/N]
【Next】wp-writing-style
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — plotting/mapping/network/survival packages and QCA tools
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — word-count exclusions and the 15-page supplement cap