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AbstractSuccessful emergency planning and response requires the cooperation of a broad array of partners. The literature on collaboration and social networks provides conflicting predictions about how organizations choose partners. One tradition focuses on the powerful role of similarity (or homophily) as predicting partner choices. A contrasting tradition argues that rational organizations will choose partners both unlike themselves and unlike their other partners to ensure that each collaboration provides access to unique resources. This article starts with the question of how an organization whose primary responsibilities are not focused on emergency management chooses partners when they respond to and prepare for emergencies. Using a survey of school districts in Texas immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the article assesses the priority of partner choice. The results indicate that school districts choose partners largely on the basis of strategic difference, though there is some evidence of homophily.

Since the introduction of economic theory to political science, theorists have argued that discussion could serve as an effective information shortcut if individuals communicate with experts who have similar preferences. Previous experimental and survey studies have found mixed results for the efficacy of social communication, but they have not observed the process of discussion partner selection which is so central to the previous models. This paper presents the results of a group-based experiment that allows for discussion partner selection. We fail to find aggregate enlightenment through social communication: lesser informed subjects are helped by social communication, but better informed subjects are harmed. This result is caused in part because subjects are too willing to seek out more expert discussion partners who have different ex ante preferences.

Abstract
Why does human prosociality vary around the world? Evolutionary models and laboratory experiments suggest that possibilities for partner choice (i.e. the ability to leave unprofitable relationships and strike up new ones) should promote cooperation across human societies. Leveraging the Global Preferences Survey (n = 27,125; 27 countries) and the World Values Survey (n = 54,728; 32 countries), we test this theory by estimating the associations between relational mobility, a socioecological measure of partner choice, and a wide variety of prosocial attitudes and behaviours, including impersonal altruism, reciprocity, trust, collective action and moral judgements of antisocial behaviour. Contrary to our pre-registered predictions, we found little evidence that partner choice is related to prosociality across countries. After controlling for shared causes of relational mobility and prosociality – environmental harshness, subsistence style and geographic and linguistic proximity – we found that only altruism and trust in people from another religion are positively related to relational mobility. We did not find positive relationships between relational mobility and reciprocity, generalised trust, collective action or moral judgements. These findings challenge evolutionary theories of human cooperation which emphasise partner choice as a key explanatory mechanism, and highlight the need to generalise models and experiments to global samples.

Wargames are games that present conflicts, usually historical and military, using game tokens that represent specific participants in the conflict, interacting on a map or other representation of the conflict in ways described by a set of rules that provides deterministic or randomized outcomes for each interaction. They have been important for military strategy since the nineteenth century, and the study of wargames has focused on their military applications. The civilian hobby version of wargaming that developed in America in the 1950s has received less attention. My literature review showed that little is known about the relationships of wargame players and how they network with each other. I also found that studies of player networks in online multiplayer games have applications for understanding user behaviors and how players value and curate their relationships. Applying a similar approach to player networks in analog games offers the chance to gain new insights from a very different set of relationships. I decided to interview individuals who participated in the wargaming hobby between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s. My aim was to document their experiences and their interactions with other wargamers to understand how they established, maintained, and valued relationships with other players. I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews during 2020, then applied thematic analysis to find common elements in their play histories and relationships. The research showed that the informants' experiences fell into two different groups that reflected cultural changes in America from the 1950s to the 1970s. The informants' stable player networks were small collections of relationships that the informants valued heterogeneously, and their closest relationships extended beyond gameplay to involve emotional compatibility as much or more as utilitarian benefits. The results suggest that the intimate nature of face-to-face board game play may have an impact on how wargamers manage their relationships, and that design ...

"Auf Basis des General Household Survey der Jahre 1988 bis 2006 (N=121.934) werden in diesem Beitrag Trends und Verhaltensmuster der Partnerschaftsanbahnung von Immigrant(inn)en in Großbritannien untersucht, sowie diesen zugrundeliegende Faktoren, die die Partnerwahl beeinflussen, erklärt. Folgende Fragestellungen sind dabei ausschlaggebend: 1. Gehen Immigrant(inn)en aus beiden Geschlechtern, aus verschiedenen Generationen und unterschiedenen ethnischen Gruppen eine Partnerschaft ein mit a) einer/ einem weißen Britin/ Briten, b) einer/einem Angehörigen der gleichen Ethnie, die/ der in Großbritannien geboren ist oder c) einer/einem im Ausland geborenen Angehörigen der gleichen Ethnie? Und 2) Welche Faktoren tragen dazu bei, diese Auswahl zu erklären? Für Immigrant(inn)en, die in Großbritannien sozialisiert wurden - d.h. diejenigen, die zur zweiten Generation gehören oder in sehr jungen Jahren eingewandert sind - ist es wahrscheinlicher, eine(n) weiße(n) britische(n) Partner(in) zu haben. Zugleich ist es für diese weniger wahrscheinlich, sich in einer transnationalen Partnerschaft zu befinden. Das Heiratsalter, der Zivilstand, die Bildungsqualifikationen, die ethnische Zusammensetzung des Wohngebietes, die Geschlechterratio und Bildungshomogamie sind signifikante Prädiktoren der Partnerwahl. Dennoch bleibt die ethnische Herkunft eine wichtige Determinante der Verhaltensmuster beim Entstehen von Partnerschaften. Die statistischen Analysen lassen darauf schließen, dass die Anteile interethnischer Partnerschaften mit einer/ einem weißen Britin/ Briten für Schwarze aus der Karibik und Afrika stetig und allmählich auch für höher gebildete Inder ansteigen werden. Die Anteile der Pakistanis und Bangladeschis mit einem weißen britischen Partner wird gering bleiben, zugleich werden transnationale Hochzeiten mit einem Partner aus Übersee, der der gleichen Ethnie angehört, gängige Praxis bleiben. Insgesamt nehmen in Großbritannien interethnische Partnerschaften zwischen der weißen britischen Bevölkerungsgruppe und denjenigen mit einem Migrationshintergrund zu." (Autorenreferat)

This work approaches the modern phenomenon of online dating, examining the ways people make use of its technical and social potential. In particular, the users' mate preferences, choices, strategies, and interactions are analyzed using the innovative method of click-stream observations and web-questionnaire data. For the purpose of these analyses, two major theories are used - an explicit theory of individual mate choice, and the more general relational theory developed by Pierre Bourdieu, which helps to highlight the social structures both underlying and resulting from mating online. Results show that online dating is not a partner marker free from social structure, but that the traditional social conditions found offline are also reproduced in this virtual setting. In contrast to the picture drawn by media discourse and advertising, online dating represents a partner market which fulfills the promise of happiness in a socially differential way.

This paper analyses the age and educational homogamy of same-sex couples in Germany over a 20-year period from 1996 to 2015. Data of the Microcensus show that cohabiting same-sex couples are less likely to be homogamous than cohabiting different-sex couples, both in terms of age and education. For same-sex couples, gender matters, male same-sex couples being the most diverse. The analyses thus confirm previous results for other European countries. Hitherto, changes in the homogamy of same-sex couples over time had not been studied in Europe, mainly due to data constraints. However, major changes in the visibility and legal acceptance of same-sex couples suggest that their patterns of partner choice are becoming more similar to those of different-sex couples. Our analyses show that the age difference among female same-sex couples has indeed narrowed over time, converging with the age difference among different-sex couples. For male same-sex couples though, there is no clear trend. In terms of educational homogamy, contrary to our assumption, we find a clear decline among same-sex couples of both genders since the 2000s, making them even more dissimilar to different-sex couples.

This study investigates the choice between complementary and parallel alliances in a market with vertical and horizontal externalities. One composite goods firm competes with two components producers, each providing a complementary component of a differentiated composite good. Although the joint profits from a parallel alliance between the composite goods firm and a components producer are always larger than those from a complementary alliance between components producers, through Nash bargaining, a components producer prefers the complementary (parallel) alliance when the degree of product differentiation is sufficiently large (small). Combined with the result that a complementary alliance is socially preferable, our findings provide meaningful implications for antitrust policy.