Legitimacy for Political Economics?

I saw this linked over on Economist's View. The long and short of it is that the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) has set up a Political Economy Program. This article is a quick and dirty run-down of recent studies in political economy, although it seems to me to be a limited definition of political economy. Granted, the author talks a lot about institutional dynamics and such, but there is no mention of important things like power analysis, alternative measure of value, et al. Either way, it seems this development is a good thing, and maybe further reflects the openness reflected by Greg Mankiw that I posted about earlier.