Implementing multisectoral food systems governance: lessons from Mexico’s GISAMAC

Multisectoral food system governance has emerged as a central priority as countries recognize the need to align policies across the agriculture, health, environment, economic, and social welfare sectors to curb diet-related diseases, inequities, and environmental degradation. Many governments have established mechanisms to coordinate food system policy across sectors, but evidence on how these arrangements are implemented and the political and institutional factors that shape their functioning remains limited. This qualitative case study examines Mexico’s Intersectoral Group for Health, Food, Environment, and Competitiveness (GISAMAC), an informal mechanism whose statutory successor (SINSAMAC) was created by law in 2024 but had not been installed at the time of writing. We conducted 18 semi-structured interviews and reviewed relevant documents. The data were then analyzed thematically using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), tailored to governance processes and responsive to political factors. We found that GISAMAC served as the institutional platform for a pre-existing reform coalition supported by civil society and international organizations. Strong cross-sector relationships, credible champions, and a broadly shared vision (including conflict-of-interest prevention) enabled interministerial collaboration despite resource scarcity and the absence of formal incentives. However, divisions within key ministries, the lack of institutionalization and dedicated funding, weak mechanisms for assessing needs, and the erosion of high-level political commitment limited GISAMAC’s operations and continuity, and the vision remained only partially shared across sectors. GISAMAC served as a legitimating platform rather than an implementing body: policies advanced when a single ministry assumed ownership with cross-sector backing. We conclude that multisectoral governance mechanisms are political projects whose viability depends on coalitions within government; that informality enables action but undermines durability, making formalization a political settlement requiring supra-sectoral endorsement; that effective implementation also requires strategic planning and systematic assessment of context and needs; and that multilateral organizations shape these mechanisms from within, as conveners and brokers of intra-governmental disputes. These lessons can inform SINSAMAC and similar mechanisms being established worldwide.