Rereading Salamon: Why Voluntary Failure Theory is Not (Really) About Voluntary Failures

Toepler Stefan ()
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Toepler Stefan: Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA

Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2023, vol. 14, issue 4, 405-414

Abstract: Voluntary Failure or Interdependence Theory remains among the most salient of Salamon’s conceptual contributions to nonprofit studies globally. Broad criticism has been scarce. Yet, there are questions about how the theory can be tested, or whether it is even testable in the first place. A lot of these questions focus on the four voluntary failures. In this commentary, I argue that the role of the voluntary failures is often overemphasized as part of Salamon’s theoretical constructs. This overemphasis in turn lends itself to problematic interpretations of his theory, which was not intended to offer a ‘failure rationale’ for the existence of the nonprofit sector—akin to the twin failures of the market and government, but at its core seeks to provide a rationale for the positive collaborative relations between government and the nonprofit sector. Within that rationale, the voluntary failures play only a relatively minor role.

Keywords: voluntary failures; interdependence theory; nonprofit theory; government-nonprofit relationships; third party government; Lester Salamon (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1515/npf-2023-0080

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