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This study analyses family business continuity from founder generation to the 2nd generation in terms of succession in the context of evolutionary economics. Two literature bases; family business succession and evolutionary thinking in organisational and economic change, are reviewed and combined to provide insights to understand the nature of family business succession. Operation of the key evolutionary forces — variation, selection, retention and struggle — in family business succession are illustrated. Regarding variation, there is a concern for understanding the importance of having enough diversity within the family firm, since this diversity of routines and competences comprises the pool of variation from which to select when the environment changes. With regards to selection, there is a concern for understanding the risk of selection bias easily rooted in the family firm culture: are some variations favoured in the selection of operating, investment and search routines because of family relations, emotions and values, including decisions on who will succeed and who will own the firm in the future. Elaboration and investigation of these concepts may help to identify special characteristics of the "family firm species" that are either beneficial or risky for the survival in the evolutionary struggle.

This article conceptualises the common agricultural policy (CAP) of the European Union as a policy regime. Policy regimes are defined as meso-level, problem-related, dynamically stable, multidimensional governance arrangements consisting of substantive and institutional elements. Utilising the policy regime as the unit of analysis makes it possible to study the lifespan of a certain policy with many levels of abstraction (paradigm, dimensions, elements, topics). This meso-level focus provides a meaningful way to explain or anticipate regime change and stability based on diverse sources. In this study, an empirical analysis of policy documents exposes the lifespan of the problems underlying the CAP regime. The analysis assesses the stability of the CAP state-assisted agriculture paradigm, the smooth diversification of the CAP elements and the volatile ups and downs of the CAP topics. Policy design and delivery has become the most extensively considered problem of the CAP, whereas the other dimensions (farms, consumers, regions, markets and trade, environment, taxpayers and budget) have converged towards a more balanced setting. As problems precede policy solutions, the design and delivery of the CAP could be the next target of major reforms.

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