What is the relationship between power and ideas? What makes ideas powerful? How do ideas drive social and political change? Daniel Béland, Martin B. Carstensen and Leonard Seabrooke, guest editors of the Journal of European Public Policy’s Special Issue “Ideas, political power and public policy”, present an exciting set of contributions, which set out to address these pressing questions. Join Martin as he introduces the Special Issue’s contributions and have a look at the issue itself here. We hope you enjoy reading!