POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 38 (September 2018) 2 Volume 38: September 2018 ISSN 2414-6633 https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38 Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Max Steuer (Slovakia) Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Rafael Plancarte (Mexico) Justinas Lingevičus (Lithuania) Andrés Lopez Rivera (Ecuador) Ana Magdalena Figueroa (Brazil) Stephanie Mojica (USA) Gergana Tzvetkova (Bulgaria) Editorial Assistants Ngoc Anh Khoa Doan (Vietnam) Dana Rice (Australia) Bruna Veríssimo (Brazil) https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38 POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 38 (September 2018) 3 Table of Contents Editorial Note ....................................................................................................................... 4 Articles Mission Accomplished? Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Financial Action Task Force’s War on Terrorist Financing / James Ferencsik ...................................................... 6 The Formation of Electoral Alliances in the Republic of Armenia: A Case Study of the 2017 Parliamentary Elections / Gayane Shakhmuradyan .......................................... 31 The Challenge of Unintelligible Life: Critical Security Studies’ Failure to Account for Violence Against Queer People / Alexander Stoffel......................................................... 48 Book review The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It by Yascha Mounk / David W. Choi ....................................................................................... 64 Call for Papers .................................................................................................................... 67 POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 38 (September 2018) 4 Editorial Note https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.0 Politikon, the flagship journal of the International Association for Political Science Students (IAPSS), welcomes submissions from scholars and students of all academic levels. Run by students and junior researchers, the journal occupies a prominent space in ‘student publishing’ in Political Science and International Relations. A recent study comparing IAPSS Politikon to two other student-run journals in the field found that it not only published the highest number of articles among the three in the period from 2005 to 2015, but it also attracts authors from a diverse set of countries and institutions from almost all continents (Cox and Kent, 2018: 807–8). While there are limitations to this analysis, it indicates the impartiality and openness of the submission evaluation process where what matters is the quality of the scholarship rather than the ranking of the author’s institution. The present issue consists of three research articles that succeeded in the double-blind peer review process and one book review. The issue starts with James Ferencsik’s study of one of the less known international organizations, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Contributing to the scholarship about the trends in (non)compliance with the decisions of such organizations, he conducts a quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of selected recommendations of the FATF in terms of reducing the instances of terrorist attacks and restricting terrorist financing. The conclusions give grounds to some scepticism about the FATF’s effectiveness in selected areas and give rise to questions about the factors standing behind these trends. Secondly, Gayane Shakhmuradyan directs our attention to the 2017 parliamentary elections in Armenia which witnessed an unusually high number of electoral alliances. Her analysis of original data obtained through interviews and a survey gives some support to the prevalence of strategic, as opposed to ideological, motivations of the parties in forming these alliances. Recognizing some methodological limitations, the article contributes to the scholarship about electoral alliances and electoral studies more generally. Thirdly, the academic subfield of critical security studies is subject to scrutiny by Alexander Stoffel, who argues in his article that the scholarship in this field does not currently possess appropriate tools for comprehending the phenomenon of violence against queer people, and explains this by the specific features that ‘queerness’. Hence, a more refined theoretical frameworks is needed to decrease the risk of violent acts going unnoticed even at the level of academic analysis. Finally, David W. Choi reviews the book The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It by Yascha Mounk, pointing to some of its core claims as well as limitations of the framework the author used. Congratulations to all IAPSS Politikon manuscript authors who took the comments from the reviewers seriously and worked with them in the revision process. The significance of the peer review https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.38.0 POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 38 (September 2018) 5 process (which in IAPSS Politikon operates on a double-blind basis) cannot be overstated since it is a core vehicle towards academic excellence. The Editorial Board hopes that even if the peer review process does not end with publication, the authors will benefit from the feedback obtained, and this experience (the first for many IAPSS Politikon authors) will encourage them to contribute further to the areas of their research interests. From this issue, IAPSS Politikon has a new member of its Editorial Board (Stephanie Mojica) and has been collaborating more actively with the IAPSS Editorial Assistants, who contribute to increasing the quality of its presentation. Furthermore, the Editorial Board is very grateful to those senior and high-profile scholars who accepted the invitation for membership in the International Advisory Committee of the journal and are willing to invest their time and effort to advise the journal on selected questions pertaining to its further development. Last but definitely not least, special thanks in this issue goes to outgoing IAPSS Politikon Editor Andrés Lopez Rivera who significantly contributed to the quality of this issue as well as previous ones. As always, we look forward to receiving new submissions from aspiring as well as more experienced students and researchers fascinated by puzzles in the societal reality that social sciences endeavour to unpack. Max Steuer Editor-in-Chief References Cox, Michaelene, and Jaimie M. Kent (2018): ‘Political Science Student Journals: What Students Publish and Why Student Publishing Matters’, PS: Political Science & Politics 51(4): pp. 804-810. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000057 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000057