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

Abstract

This article examines how international lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism is governed through state funding. Through archival material documenting the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency’s (SIDA’s) funding of two international LGBTI organizations – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and the Swedish Federation of LGBTQI Rights – complemented with interviews, we analyse power relations and management practices, how these are reconciled with SIDA’s efforts to make LGBTI funding more partner oriented, and the consequences for recipients. Our main finding is that within the funding schemes, control is exercised in less direct, hierarchical and overt ways than seems to be implied in some critiques of donor influence and ‘neocolonialism’ in the Western promotion of LGBTI rights. Instead, government takes place in multifaceted and horizontal ways, involving a variety of actors, which makes the exercise of power less visible but nonetheless far-reaching. Through SIDA’s funding schemes, power relations are reproduced in specific ways, including the partial reshaping of activist organizations into bureaucratized and depoliticized state ‘partners’.