The bonds that unite partner institutions in the delivery of shared transnational collaborative programmes are critical in the effective management of these education partnerships. A crucial component in this unification is social capital, where partners connect and develop networks, lubricated by trust, which facilitates cooperation and commitment to the venture, producing purposive and beneficial outputs. This paper explores this phenomenon by investigating the way social capital manifests between operational colleagues tasked in the delivery of collaborative joint-degree programme partnerships. Initially, the paper explores the relationship between 'partnership' and 'social capital'. It then analyses three sociological perspectives of social capital, the "rational," "critical" and "democratic" strains, before examining them in relation to empirical data collected from three collaborative programme partnerships. The paper concludes there is evidence of all three strains, but advocates partner institutions observe four recommendations, so to encourage the manifestation of the beneficial "critical" and "democratic" strains.