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84 P. F. Luzarsfeld
of ‘explanation sketches’. These are schemata in which the covering law is not
really known, the parameters of the concrete situation are vague, and in which
therefore any concrete explanation is more or less distant from a rigourous
analysis. As the name indicates, explanation sketches are above all incomplete
forms of explanation, they require further ‘filling-out’ by empirical research, for
which the sketch suggests the direction. As our examples will show, the incompleteness
and vagueness can be found in various dimensions. There are
hidden assumptions which are not brought out; there is segmentation of a process
with emphasis on one part, neglect of another; and there is great variation
in the empirical ‘filling-out’. The common element in our examples is a movement
or a process leading from one structural element at an earlier point in
time to a changed structural element at a later point in time. Connecting the
two, some causal agent is imputed, which either sets the process into motion,
determines its direction, relates several causal factors or maintains its flow in
some other way.
It is useful to apply this notion of explanation sketches to the work of the
macrosociologist. In thelight of the present review, one can go one step further.
Hempel concluded his discussion in the rather unspecific, permissive manner
just described. Scrutiny of concrete studies permits us to single out a few major
types of explanatory sketches. Such a classification reflects well the spirit of
much current sociological analysis. Just as the macrosociologist likes to work
with a rather small number of basic concepts, so he tends to apply relatively
few explanation sketches. I shall single out three types: the linear sketch, the
strategy mode and the dialectic type.
a. The most primitive and basic form of all explanation sketches arepatterns of
simple linearity. This supposes a process in which the first element is seen to be
the cause for the second, which in turn is the cause for the third, which in turn
is the cause for the fourth. Very often such a multi-stage causal change is devel-
oped with little attention to the links between cause and effect, which tend to
remain highly specific or historically bound. The incompleteness of this sketch
lies partly in its highly specific nature, which tends to resort to monocausal
explanations even if the independent variate is some vaguely described, sup-
posedly powerful ‘factor’, partly in its segmented nature, which assumes that all
other conditions are unchanged, insignificant or in other ways held constant.
It is precisely these hidden assumptions which have to be brought out if one
looks for generalizations.
Inkeles deals with a sequential change that was introduced in the Soviet
Union in the 1930s. At that time, the authority pattern in the industrial pro-
duction process was altered from collective to individual responsibility. This
in turn led to a reorganization of authority relations in the school system as the
major recruiting reservoir for the factory. The former quasi-egalitarian rela-
tions between teachers and students gave way to a more clear-cut hierarchical
structure, discipline returned to the classroom, and various forms of experimen-
tation with progressive ideas met an abrupt end. The final wave of change oc-
curred in thefamily, which responded mainly to the changed authority pattern of