Do people specifically seek to live among political co-partisans when they relocate? Does the partisan composition of the neighborhood affect their level of residential satisfaction? Drawing on survey data and a survey-embedded experiment, I find that people have a clear preference for co-partisans. Both Republican and Democrat identifiers prefer more co-partisans in their neighborhood. Although the preference is not the primary factor in deciding where to settle, the partisan composition of a neighborhood does affect an individual’s sense of neighborhood satisfaction. Results from a survey-embedded experiment show that respondents’ subjective satisfaction is sensitive to objective facts about their neighborhood. Respondents’ satisfaction slightly decreases when told their neighborhood has a higher presence of members of the opposite party than perceived.

Creating successful collaborative governance regimes is difficult, but can be especially hard when collaborations are externally generated by higher levels of government as opposed to self-generated by local agencies and stakeholders due to the lack of spontaneity. We analyze this problem as it applies to California’s Integrated Regional Water Governance Program. Public administration theory indicates that a core element in a successful collaboration is empowering local leaders who share the collaboration’s intended goal. However, the political concessions to local autonomy necessary to enact an externally generated collaboration can undermine its success. The tensions between maintaining local autonomy and creating a regional approach are inherently strong in a “layered collaborative governance” approach that acknowledges and accommodates local boundaries. Drawing on the concept of role differentiation, we hypothesize that the roles participants play in layered collaborative governance will frequently derive from their preexisting issue areas, geographic orientations, and power relations, but that program design incentives can influence which groups participate in the effort and how they engage. We test these hypotheses in the context of California’s Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) program. We find evidence of role differentiation on grant leadership both with respect to the initial goal of regional collaboration as well as later efforts to address the water issues of disadvantaged communities.