Beyond homicide rates: evaluating peacebuilding through local systems strengthening in Mexico

Evidence on how local systems strengthening contributes to peace-promoting conditions remains limited, particularly for interventions working through institutional coordination rather than service delivery. This article examines Juntos para la Prevención de la Violencia, a five-year USAID-funded initiative across nine Mexican municipalities, drawing on 104 survey responses and 82 interviews. Systems strengthening worked best where interventions centred on specialised functions such as Civic Justice rather than broad coordination platforms, while rigid results frameworks and rapid scale-up produced institutional imitation without functional change. Rather than estimating impacts, this process evaluation traces mechanisms where violence indicators are noisy or slow to respond.