Governing queer activism: power and visibility in state funding of international LGBTI organizations

This article explores how international LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) activism is shaped by state funding. Using archival data from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) regarding its financial support for two international LGBTI organizations—the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the Swedish Federation of LGBTQI Rights—along with interviews, they examine power dynamics and management practices. The researchers investigate how these align with SIDA’s efforts to make LGBTI funding more partner-oriented and analyze the implications for recipient organizations. Their primary finding indicates that control within these funding frameworks is exerted in less direct, hierarchical, and overt ways than some critiques of donor influence and “neocolonialism” have suggested. Instead, governance operates through complex and horizontal mechanisms involving multiple actors, making the exercise of power less visible yet still far-reaching. SIDA’s funding schemes, according to the researchers, reproduce specific power relations, contributing to the partial transformation of activist organizations into bureaucratized, depoliticized state partners.