Narrative Constructions of Expertise: An Exploration of Storytelling in the Physician-Assisted Death Policy Debate

This article explores the social construction of expertise in the policy debate on the legalization of physician-assisted death (PAD) in the United States. The analysis explores the role of culture in policymaking and expertise construction through a multilevel narrative analysis. The findings show how stakeholders deploy cultural meanings with emotional and moral appeals through storytelling to demarcate boundaries of expertise, which become standardized in fixed linkages between persons, practices, tools, and processes. The analysis also addresses methodological questions to expand our explorations of the natural history of social problems within the framework of policymaking processes. Four distinct and publicly available data sources are explored: newspapers articles, narratives from civil society activist organizations, legislative testimony documents, and professional development material for physicians. The analysis reveals two salient stories in the debate: the “good death” and the “slippery slope.” This article contributes to a sociology of expertise by empirically observing the construction of networks through narrative and shedding light on the role of belief systems and emotions in policymaking and social problems.