Mandate for Leadership VI: Principles to Limit Government, Expand Freedom, and Strengthen America

In 2005, Heritage published the sixth edition of Mandate for Leadership. This edition of Mandate was just 156 pages long. According to Heritage, the shorter length reflected that policies and ideas from the early Mandate editions had, by the time of this publication, largely become part of the mainstream debate.

Background: In January 1981, Mandate for Leadership was released as a 20 volume, 3,000 page publication. Mandate contained more than 2,000 individual suggestions to move the federal government in a conservative direction, focusing on management and administration. The report "presented an explicit plan for reshaping public discourse on civil rights issues." To that end, it recommended the Justice Department "halt its affirmative action policies to remedy past discrimination against women and other minorities."

At the first meeting of his cabinet, President Reagan passed out copies of Mandate, and many of the study's authors were recruited into the White House administration and around 60% of the 2,000 proposals in it were implemented or initiated at the end of Reagan's first year in office. The Washington Post called it “an action plan for turning the government toward the right as fast as possible.” The New York Times in 2002 called it “the manifesto of the Reagan revolution.