Abstract: Social organization is an important structural force in addition to the administrative force in a city, so the governing of social organization is significant for urban governance. The old institutionalism focuses on law and the central role of law in governing, accordingly the documents of law and policy constitute the formal governing framework. Social organization governing in China is characterized by a smooth change "from control to development", which is a kind of "selective development", "trend development" and "key development". First, functional social organization that provides services is gradually stronger in the survival competition; second, the government provides continuous resource supply and policy incentives for the development of social organization; third, comprehensive supervision on social organization confines its democratic consultation capacity. The "legal-institutional" framework of social organization governance reflects the tendency of "governing by documents" and "governing by departmental regulations", and the practice of the rule of law need to be further developed.

Key words: social organization, urban governance, “legal-institutional” analysis, service-oriented social organization