On the first page of the Preface, the two authors of this book state their objectives: ‘(1) a better understanding of the political dynamics of policy making in health care; (2) a more informed discussion of policy options, and (3) fewer cycles of naive enthusiasm leading to disillusion’. In other words, they do not just aspire to present current and future fans with a greatest hits album. They have an agenda, and it is to do with ideas.

The book does fulfil many of the objectives of a greatest hits collection, of course. While anybody who has been working in the field of health politics and policy should have read a good number of the essays, and know their co-authors, setting them together in a single book changes their look, earns some a rereading and highlights others that were not so visible (it is a public service, for example, to rescue Klein's ‘O'Goffe's Tale’, a wonderful short essay capturing three decades of debate about the welfare state, from the obscure edited book that contained it). But it is not just a collection of their favourite and best-known pieces. Little known essays gain prominence and, notably, several of Klein's legendary and pithy analyses of the NHS are missing (to be found in a Reference Day1997 collection of his writings, Only Dissect, edited by Patricia Day).

Their agenda is, rather, to show the role of ideas in political analysis. The book shows their power, and, sometimes, their shoddiness. The introductory chapters, written especially for this volume, endorse the ‘three Is’ framework – ideas, institutions, and interests – that underpins much political science teaching. Missing an ‘I’ is likely to mean an overly reductive and probably wrong analysis. It is common to work with only one or two ‘I's, but methodologically weak. As a broader analytical perspective it does not work so well. The borders between ‘I's are indistinct. Institutions and interests are ultimately ideas – what people believe is possible or desirable. So ideas infect them. But interests and institutions tend to shape ideas: where you stand depends on where you sit. So it is equally tempting to reduce ideas to the interests they serve and the institutional context in which they do or do not make sense. The opening chapters, for all their methodological appeal, do not produce a theoretical resolution to this problem. The ‘coda’ ending the book essentially says as much, coming down to ‘the battle of ideas must be prior to – or at a minimum an essential part of – any analysis of ideas and interests’ (p. 539).

Where the book excels – both because of the quality of the contents and because of their careful juxtaposition – is in the examples of how to handle ideas, and in the practical demonstration of how ideas fit between interests and institutions in politics. Many of the best chapters are demonstrations of how to have a more ‘informed discussion’ and ‘fewer cycles of naive enthusiasm’ as applied to, inter alia, rationing, managed care, learning, theories of the welfare state and health inequalities. Over and over again, the chapters unpick the incoherence in powerful ideas. But they also leave the reader better positioned to think clearly – almost every essay proposes a more lucid, less biased and more workable way to think about the problem. On topics where both worked extensively, such as rationing, the result is a systematic exploration.

That is a major reason why the book is not harmed by mixing chapters written in different decades. Ideas constantly recur in politics, only slightly rebadged, and a demolition of softheaded ideas about public involvement in the United States in the 1970s is perfectly adequate to understand the failings of patient and public involvement discussed in, for example, the Francis Report. A 1995 essay on the politics of health coverage in the United States is a helpful guide to the debates in 2009–10, and, joined with an essay about medical cost inflation, is a powerful rebuke to the blinkers and influence of economists. For once, a book mixing old and new essays works.

The virtue of taking ideas seriously – and the reason this book is a model for people not just interested in health in England and the United States – is that it is very hard to understand public policy without understanding both political process and the substance of policy. A study of legislative politics that ignores the way the agendas were set and the alternatives specified – in other words, the ideas and rhetoric of substantive policy debates – is arid. A study of policy and ideas that ignores the role of powerful political generalists – ministers, prime ministers, presidents and treasuries – can be unrealistic. Good public policy research is hard to find for the same reason that it is worth doing: it demands understanding both politics, and policy debates. Hard, but, as these essays show, ultimately very rewarding.