Governing conservation tourism partnerships in Kenya

• Compares how two conservation tourism partnerships in Kenya are governed.
• Provides a theoretical framework for understanding dynamic tourism partnerships.
• Analyzes the internal and external congruency of conservation tourism partnerships.
• Argues that metagovernance can ensure effective and democratic partnership outcomes.
• Discusses how non-state actors can also take on metagovernance roles.

This article adopts the Policy Arrangements Approach to study how the stability of conservation tourism partnerships is governed. Our study compares two private-community partnerships in Kenya to explore how incongruences resulting from internal dynamics and external challenges are faced. Drawing on the notion of metagovernance, the article examines the roles of the actors involved in ensuring internal and external congruence. It is concluded that conservation tourism PCPs are adaptive entities that need to be actively governed, to ensure long term outcomes that are effective and democratic, and that both state and non-state actors can take on this role.