The question of how best to tackle anthropogenic climate change is a thorny one: besides scientific uncertainty regarding the consequences of climate change, another difficulty is that the recommendations of climate experts may clash with the priorities of citizens, interest groups and political institutions. With the European Green Deal, the European Union (EU) recently made significant advances in climate policy; at the same time, and as is well known, the EU and its institutions have long been criticised for their “democratic deficit” and for their failure to involve all civil society actors equally in EU law-making processes. This article sheds light on the legal framework governing civil society participation in EU law-making, and more specifically on the Commission’s consultations pursuant to Article 11(3) of the Treaty on European Union. It then critically assesses selected features of two consultations conducted by the Commission in connection with the European Climate Law, which it evaluates from the perspective of the EU primary law principles of democracy, openness and transparency. Through this analysis, and by suggesting how future climate consultations could be further improved, the article aims to contribute to the (still nascent) legal scholarship on civil society participation in environmental and climate policy.

To design regulatory policies, agencies depend on information from the industries they are tasked to regulate. Therefore, agencies can organise consultations with the aim of obtaining information from different perspectives. This article focuses on stakeholder diversity in agency public consultations. We ask to what extent is information provided by stakeholders other than the regulated sector, such as other business interests, experts or nonbusiness interests? Stakeholder diversity is relevant as it may prevent agencies to become exposed to one-sided information and capture by specialised interests. Are there consultation design factors that foster consultation diversity? Or, is (a lack of) consultation diversity structurally shaped by the context in which an agency operates? Analysing a wide range of public consultations organised by European Union regulatory agencies indicates that most information agencies receive via consultations comes from regulated interests and that the limited participation of nonregulated interests is highly tenacious.

This article concerns the second round of consultations on the drafting of the 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. In this context, it explores the nature of the “communication space” within which regulatory authorities and interest groups interact with each other. The authors analyse the extent to which the consultations met their main goal of remedying the lack of democratic legitimacy in the process of drafting the regulations. Both discourse analysis and analysis of the concrete results of the consultations reveal that the “communication space“ is shaped by certain pre-established rules. The authors codify and compare the arguments put forward by interest groups in their proposals for modifications as well as the justifications offered by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. They conclude that issues capable of calling into question the soundness of regulatory interventions, having already been dealt with during the first round of consultations, are seldom raised during the second round. The authors also assert that the relationship between state and non-state actors is complementary and interdependent rather than antagonistic, noting that interventions by interest groups have a real impact on the regulations. Consultation is at the root of plurality of modes of production of law within the legal order of the state. The article highlights the complementary nature of the norms produced by state and other sources of normativity and draws attention to the importance of the cooperation between state and civil society actors.

Aims — Empathy is an important basis of all provider-patient interaction, including general practice. Little has been known about the details of how general practitioners express empathy to their patients. In the present study, it was a main aim to carry out a detailed qualitative study of actual sequences through which empathy was achieved, by focusing on the form, function, and categorisation of such sequences. Methods — The study drew on the qualitative method of conversation analysis. Transcriptions of 77 British general-practitioner-patient interactions were analysed in detail in order to identify and characterise sequences in which empathy was achieved. Results — Four types of empathy were identified, described, and analysed: cognitive empathy, affective empathy, sharing empathy, and nurturant empathy. Although sequences involving empathy typically were brief and occurred relatively rarely, the analyses demonstrated that the sequences often concerned matters of great importance to the interactants. Conclusions — The study underlined the need to focus also on phenomena that occur relatively rarely in consultations. For this purpose, the method of conversation analysis was a useful tool.

Declaration of Interest: there was no conflict of interest.

Background: No specialized geriatric psychiatry consultation services are available for elderly people in the institutional care system in Turkey. Our aim was to evaluate psychiatric consultations among the residents of three homes for the elderly in a country with a rapidly aging population, and to investigate possible problems regarding psychiatric consultations.

Methods: The residents of three homes for the elderly, which served partially as “care and rehabilitation centers” (equivalent to nursing homes), were chosen for the study. Data on the use of psychiatric services (mainly patient consultations with a visiting psychiatrist) were collected and analyzed.

Results: The percentage of patients in the three homes for the elderly who had psychiatric consultations between 2005 and 2007 was 31.8% (172/540). The main reasons for referral were forgetfulness (61%), depressive symptoms (37.7%), agitation and disruptive behavior (29.6%), and psychotic symptoms (27.9%). Of these patients, 46.5% were diagnosed with dementia, 20.9% with depression, 20.5% with behavioral and psychotic symptoms of dementia, and 18.6 % with primary psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.

Conclusion: Homes for the elderly in Turkey are not adequate in terms of consultations for psychiatric problems. Integration of these institutions with hospitals and organizing routine consultation visits from the psychiatry units would enhance the mental health of the elderly. Supporting the staff, maintaining good cooperation between them, and organizing educational programs in the field of mental health of the elderly are also required.