State and public governance: From social organization toward administrative activity

The article discusses the concept of state as a social integrity functioning in the form of a metasystem consisting of three subsystems (political power, economy and civil society) proposed by A.Ya. Rubinshtein. The relationship of the proposed approach to understanding state, and the understanding of public governance as an administrative activity representing regulated social relays is considered. Administrative procedures that are the core of administrative activity are described. The main features of administrative procedures are named: they consist of step-by-step actions realized in the practice of administration. It is argued that administrative procedures, their composition and ways of realization by state bodies, are the main objects of research in the field of public governance. The paper considers the correlation between the indices of the state (state indices) and indices of the quality of public governance. It is argued that the difference between state indices and indices of public governance arises due to their different aims (analytics of the state - analytics of administrative procedures). In this regard, the index of social organization of the state (ISOS) proposed by A. Ya. Rubinshtein is analyzed.