Silva Sini Mertsola

I am a PhD candidate in Political Theory at the Department of Political Science. My research addresses the tension between democracy and public administration. All democratic states need bureaucratic apparatuses that draft, implement, and evaluate public policies. However, unelected bureaucrats unavoidably exercise considerable political power, which seems to conflict with some of our dearly held democratic principles. In my dissertation, I investigate how democracy and bureaucracy can be reconciled and outline proposals for making our bureaucratic apparatuses more democratic.

Before pursuing a PhD, I worked as a public governance consultant at the Demos Helsinki think tank, advising ministries and public agencies on public governance reform. Our projects sought to bridge the gap between academic research and the daily operations of public organizations. For example, we advanced the theory of experimentalist governance, refining it into the Humble Governance approach, which has since been piloted in many public organizations.