Since the capitalist economic crisis in the 1930s made the welfare economists aware of the‘Market Failure',the western welfare states have boomed quickly.In the modern western countries the public financial expenditure and the size of the government have significantly grown.The fiscal deficit has been puzzling the western governments,and have threatened the economic development and caused the economic inflation.With the size of government swelling,the government agencies are rigescent,inefficient and bureaucratic.Then the downsizing became the concerns of the western government,however,they still could not escape from the vicious circle,which is‘symplification-expansion-resymplification-reexpansion'.The stagflation predicament makes people aware that the era of“Government Failure”is coming.Since the 1980s the governmental reform has swept across the world.With the emergence of globalization and the popularization of communication facilities,the wave of global democracy also swept and the administrative reform are also in full swing around the world.Meanwhile,a amount of problems that the market and government are not able to solve alone,such as the shortage of natural resources,ecological destruction,the widening of wealth gap,etc.,have caused widespread concern.Then the nonprofit organizations as an important social force have boomed over the world.In the academia the theories on civil society and nonprofit organization are increasing,which includes the voice of praise and criticism.

Under the above context,Lester M.Salamon begun to focus on the nonprofit organization,and becomes a famous and the most influential research ers on the nonprofit organization in the contemporary era.The research topic of the thesis is about Salamon's Nonprofit Organization theory.The reasons why Salamon's theory is chosen as the research topic are not only that Salamon explains the Nonprofit Organization Theory systematically,but also because Salamon has rethought on the nonprofit organizations and has re-innovated the previous theories.It uses the literature search to illustrate Salamon's thoughts systematically,from which itreveals the internal logic of his theory.Then it uses the comparative method and also the historical method to illustrate the origin and impact of Salamon's theory in the particular western academic background and theoretical tradition,which may help analyze Salamon's theory deeply and evaluate the contributions and limitations.In addition,the thesis uses the method of integrating theory and practice to take China as a case study and to use Salamon's theory to analyze the development of Chinese nonprofit organizations,and then to put forwards some suggestions to Chinese nonprofit organizations.

In addition to the Introduction,the thesis composed of six chapters.The main contents are as follows：

The Introduction part illustrates the research background,purpose and significance,research methodology and its innovations.In recent years the social changes have provided the conditions and opportunities and also brought the challenges to the nonprofit organizations.The“Global Associational Revolution”has come,and different theories of the nonprofit organization have emerged,in which Salamon's theory is quite influential.The Introduction part uses the methods of literature search to see the research status and their defects of the previous researches on Salamon's thoughts,and then explains the research question,analytical path and the structure of the thesis.

The first chapter introduces the life,works and main thoughts of Salamon.First of all,it is his life,which introduces briefly Salamon's growth experiences,academic career,the key turning point,and work experience.Then it introduces Salamon's main works,and also describes their central ideas and contents.Finally,it gets Salamon's thoughts into shape and also explores the in ternal logical relations between different theories.

The second chapter discusses the background of the formation of Salamon's Nonprofit Organization Theory.No idea is created in a vacuum,and therefore this chapter explores the formation of Salamon's thoughts from two aspects.On one hand,the social background has exerted influence on the formation of Salamon's theory,which includes the governance crisis in the context of globalization and the rapid development of the contemporary nonprofit organization.On the other hand,it explores what kind of traditional theories may also impact the formation of his theory,such as Civil Society theory,Modern Nonprofit Organization Theory,and other modern social theories,etc,and then analyzes the status of Salamon's Nonprofit Organization Theory in the western political theory.

The third chapter explains Salamon's interpretation to the nonprofit organization.First,it is the concept of organization,which means Salamon's Structure/Operational definition model and the international classification of nonprofit organization.Second,it is the origin of organization.Salamon presents his Social Origin Theory based onthe analysis of the traditional origin theories.Third,it is the function of organization,which demonstrates Salamon's analysis to the function of nonprofit organization.Fourth,it is the measurement of organization,which shows how the nonprofit organization and its legal context are measured and operationalized by Salamon,and then compares his index with Anheier' Civil Society Index.

The fourth chapter demonstrates the rethink of Salamon on nonprofit organization.First of all,Salamon realizes the challenges of the nonprofit organization facing in practice.Salamon has seen the development trend of nonprofit organization in the contemporary times,and also explained the impulse of the“global associational revolution”,but he also recognized the challenges that the nonprofit organization are facing in the process of development.Based on this understanding,Salamon broke the myth of the nonprofit organization,and push away the“Helo”set in the head of the nonprofit organization.In the end,he proposed the Third Failure,that is,the Voluntary Failure Theory.

The fifth chapter analyzes Salamon's transcendence and new developments to the theory of nonprofit organization.Since Salamon put forwards the nonprofit organization theory,he has not terminated the academic exploration but re-innovated his thoughts.Firstly,from the perspective of state and society relationship,Salamon proposed a new model of partnership.Cooperation between the government and the nonprofit organization is the most appropriate model of the relationship and also is the common model in the western developed countries.Secondly,from the tools perspective,Salamon proposed a new theory of Government Tools,which transfers the research focus of the traditional theory from project and organization to the tools needed by the public projects and also offers a new path to transform the function of the government and improve the performance of public services.Thirdly,from the governance perspective,Salamon re-organized his ideas and theories,and proposed a new theory called the“New Governance”.

Chapter sixth is the Conclusion and Inspiration.On the one hand,it analyzes the contributions and limitations of Salamon's Nonprofit Organization Theory.The thesis gets a conclusion that Salamon's thoughts showa intern logic from‘Voluntary Failure' to‘New Governance',and we can see the features and trends of the development of the contemporary nonprofit organization theory from Salmaon's thoughts.On the other hand,it illustrates the inspiration of Salamon's theory to the development of Chinese nonprofit organizations,and also gives some suggestions to build the public governance model in China.

Keywords: Salamon;Nonprofit Organization;Voluntary Failure;New Governance