The Transformation Of Government Function And The Development Of Nonprofit Organizations

Since economic system reform of our country starting from laterseventies of 20 century, especially from The Third Plenary Session of the11th Party Central Committee, political and social reforms have beenconducted, accompanying with the establishment and its perfection ofsocialist market economy. With the downsizing of government sectors, thetransition of government functions, and the objective pattern of "weakeninggovernment intervention, strengthening social function"being set up, how toconstruct the relationship between government and market, government andsociety or government and the publics is becoming the key to a successfulpolitical reform. At present, the core of dealing exactly with theserelationships is government function transition. No matter which function tobe performed, market or social, nonprofit organizations will be needed asagents to share some function which has ever been wholly undertaken bygovernment and to supply more public services. Hence the transition ofgovernment function brings opportunity to the development of our country.Meanwhile, the latter would promote the economic, political and socialreform. Under new historical conditions, it is extremely meaningful todiscuss the relationship between the government function transition and thedevelopment of nonprofit organization.On the above premise, the following topics on the relationship betweengovernment function transition and development of nonprofit organizationwill be discussed in this paper. In part one, the concept of nonprofitorganizations will be introduced, its feature be analyzed and its fundamentaltheory be discussed, using existing theory as reference. Specifically, on thebasis of giving a survey of the concept defined by authors both of domesticand foreign, nonprofit organization is considered as one that which targetpublic service, pursues no profit, participate voluntarily and is independent.Secondly, some impotent features of nonprofit organization is summarized asnonprofitable, non-governmental, publicly benefited, voluntary andindependent. Thirdly, the main type of nonprofit organization in our countryis given out. And finally, the theoretical basis, such as market failure theory,government failure theory and contract failure theory, on which NPOs areoriginated and developed, is analyzed. Market failure and government failuretheory explain the necessity of public goods supply by NPOs; whereascontract failure theory focuses on the feature of them and explains thenecessity and advantage of private goods supply by NPOs. Hence, thesetheories are complementary, and together consist of theoretical basis ofNPOs'origenation and development.In part two, this paper introduces the development of NPOs now insome typical western countries and, on the basis of this, analyzes variousdevelopment patterns of NPOs and what they are mean to us. Part three is the core of this paper in which the relationships of mutualpromotion and interaction between government function transition andNPOs'development, that is to say, government function transition must haverecourse to NPOs and the reverse is also true. Meanwhile, the background onwhich the NPOs in our country stems, the status quo of NPOs development inour country and the influence of NPOs on the economic and socialdevelopment of our country are analyzed as well in this part. Such analysisproves that the NPOs is medium of government function transition and animportant approach to promote government function transition.The main existing NPOs'development problems are first analyzed inpart four, which includes the following: nonhealthiness of management lawand regulations on NPOs, nonreasonaleness of management order and NPOslayout, low ability to survival, lack ability to supply special services, lowability to develop human resources, and so on. On the basis of these, the rolestaken part in by our government in the NPOs'development are studied. Suchroles include: supporting and cultivating NPOs, supervising and controllingthem, establishing healthy relations between government and NPOs andguaranteeing the independence of NPOs.In part five, based on above analysis prosperous future of NPOs in ourcountry is speculated and the influence of the development of NPOs on thetransformation of government function is especially emphasized.In a word, due to their particular advantage in such aspect as supplying...