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The discussion on ‘New Approaches to Political Economy (PE)’ gives us a state-of-the-art overview of the main theoretical and conceptual developments within the concept of political economy. Thereby, it invites us to broaden our knowledge regarding manifold novel approaches, which make use of more complex methods to study the less stable, less predictable, but faster changing realities of smaller or bigger geographical regions. In this discussion forum, Amable takes a closer look on the nature of ‘conflict’ as well as the relationship between conflict and institutional change or stability. After stressing the relevance of comparative capitalism in general, Regan also zooms in on the political conflicts in comparative political economy from three different perspectives (electoral politics, organized interest groups and business-state elites), where he finds new avenues, tensions and research agendas are opening …