Abstract This special issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of Social Policy & Administration. Much has been written over the last two decades about the role of ideas in social policy, especially as they relate to institutions. For instance, a decade ago in this journal, I published a now widely cited article titled‘Ideas and social policy: An institutionalist perspective’. The present contribution returns to some of the issues raised in that 2005 article, while assessing the recent ideational scholarship, with the goal of formulating a new research agenda for scholars in the field. Special attention is paid to the need for clear analytical distinctions and rigorous empirical analysis to study the explanatory role of ideas in social policy change, as they may interact with institutions. This article concludes with a discussion about the meaning of institutionalism in ideational analysis and how to concretely explore the interaction between ideas and institutions in the study of social policy stability and change.
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