Conclusions and Implications

Abstract

This chapter pulls all the findings together and extends the reasoning to other circumstances, including the future of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF). It reflects on how organizational attempts to build (or restrict) a population's “community of fate” can have effects in state-building and in the politicization of ethnic or religious divisions. By uncovering the processes that account for why some unions go beyond economism when others do not, the chapter seeks to offer a more general explanation of the observed diversity among religious, political, and even nationalist groups. One reason for studying unions is that they face, in miniature, many of the same challenges and possibilities confronted by other stakeholder organizations, ranging from religious and nationalist groups to political parties to states and firms.