Why have alliances proliferated when the probability of failure is higher than that of success? How do we explain a growing recourse to them whilst also assuming rational strategic management? Are we not learning from experience? And why have we persisted in approaching alliances with expectations of finding homogeneity whilst being well aware that they often unfold in very diverse and changing circumstances? Why are some apparently successful alliances prematurely dismantled? Why are others deemed successful whilst not having attained their primary goal, or in the absence of any obvious tangible attainments? Why do some survive despite being problematic? Why do others appear to get by despite poor managerial decisions? These questions may entail some of the paradoxes of alliance life. They can be resolved but principally at the level of epistemology. For we, in our thinking about them, may have sought constancy, homogeny, teleology, progress or principle in the absence of compelling empirical evidence that these are their usual properties. To that extent it may be helpful to relax any such a-priori assumptions and approach alliances plainly as facts – as things that simply are. The adjective ‘social’ in the book title is, however, intentional. Some facts cannot be abstracted from circumstance without risking disfiguration. Yet this is not to suggest that we approach them completely void of theory, for quite the reverse is true. The inevitability of interpretation has been subject to a longstanding debate in academic circles and one need not look far for support.