Observations on Elite Isolation in the Milliken Executive Office
Abstract
In November of 1972, I received a telephone call
from George Weeks, Press Secretary to Governor William
Milliken, acknowledging receipt of a letter I had written
to the Governor and inviting me to spend the following
winter working as a student intern in the Michigan Executive
Office. I accepted the position, and with the limited
knowledge I had of the structure and operation of the Executive
Office, attempted to design my Senior Individualized
Project around what I expected the job would entail. In my work in the Executive Office and in this paper
I have attempted to combine these two interests: exposure
to practical politics at the state level and an investigation of the operative result of executive office decisionmaking --
pluralist or elitist. Since the majority of the
SIP was completed in the winter of work/study itself, this
paper is intended as a job report and not as a formal
thesis. It is written in an informal narrative style,
and, due to the fact that it is written on the basis of
primary research, it contains no reference to published
texts. If you are not a current K College student, faculty, or staff member, email dspace@kzoo.edu to request access to this SIP.