County governments in Kenya, established under the 2010 Constitution and operationalized through the County Governments Act, 2012, were designed to bring decision-making and public resources closer to citizens and to strengthen the accountability of local leadership. More than a decade into devolution, however, leadership accountability at the county level remains uneven: reports of resource mismanagement, weak oversight, and eroded public trust persist alongside pockets of genuine institutional progress, even though Kenya's formal rules for county accountability are, on paper, comparatively robust. This paper argues that the puzzle is not a shortage of rules but a shortage of will: formally strong institutions produce accountability only when political leadership is committed to enforcing and honoring them. It develops an integrated conceptual framework for understanding the determinants of leadership accountability in Kenya's county governments, synthesizing Agency, Stewardship, Institutional, and Stakeholder theories, situated within a critical realist epistemology, with the empirical governance literature on devolved administration in Kenya and comparable contexts. Four interacting clusters of determinants are identified and examined: institutional factors (legal-regulatory frameworks, oversight bodies, audit and disclosure regimes); political factors (political culture, leadership style, and political will); social factors (public participation, civil society engagement, and media scrutiny); and economic factors (resource allocation, financial management, and anti-corruption enforcement). Robust legal frameworks accomplish little without the political will to enforce them, and public participation is hollow without accessible information and a free press. Drawing on Kenyan and comparative evidence, the paper proposes a testable conceptual model, four interaction propositions, and a mixed-methods empirical research agenda for validating the framework across Kenya's 47 counties. It concludes with implications for policymakers, oversight institutions, and civil society actors seeking to strengthen devolved governance.

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